Two Tax Rates: One for Bigwig Investors, Another for the Rest of Us

[babylonsister]

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=3304251&page=1&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312

Two Tax Rates: One for Bigwig Investors, Another for the Rest of Us
Amid Blackstone Deal, Congress Checks If Billionaire Investors Benefit From Tax Loophole

By JAKE TAPPER
WASHINGTON, June 22, 2007


Tonight Blackstone Chairman and CEO Stephen Schwarzman will go to bed several billion dollars richer, after his elite investment firm became a publicly traded corporation this morning on Wall Street.

The tax rate for most Americans is anywhere from 25 to 35 percent, but guess how much Schwarzman will pay.

"Most of the money Schwartzman makes is going to be taxed at the 15 percent rate," said Dan Primack, editor of PEHub.com. It's "a much lower rate than the average American business person -- and more important, the average American investor."

Congress is debating whether there should be changes in tax code so that the people who run elite investment clubs, called hedge funds or private equity firms, have to pay the same tax rates as the rest of us. But that's easier said than done since these billionaires are flexing their newly-established political muscles.

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1. Of course they should pay the same tax rates as anyone else.

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2. A fine example of our obscenely regressive tax system

[FreakinDJ]

3. Don't you mean obscenely "Oppressive"

designed to keep the working poor -"Poor"