{"id":178825,"date":"2018-08-10T18:41:00","date_gmt":"2018-08-10T23:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/08\/10\/not-surprised-by-what-this-mniscreant-has-done\/"},"modified":"2018-08-10T18:41:00","modified_gmt":"2018-08-10T23:41:00","slug":"not-surprised-by-what-this-mniscreant-has-done","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/08\/10\/not-surprised-by-what-this-mniscreant-has-done\/","title":{"rendered":"Not Surprised by What this Mniscreant has Done"},"content":{"rendered":"
In an effort by Steve Mnuchin to benefit his buddies, the Treasury Secretary has declared that banks are not financial institutions<\/a>:<\/div>\n

Do \u201cfinancial services\u201d include banking? Not according to the Trump administration, whose new rule, issued Wednesday by the Treasury Department, argues there is a difference \u2014 and then cites the alleged difference as a means of extending lucrative tax breaks to the banking industry. The new rule represents more than semantic hairsplitting and hands a huge windfall to the banking industry.<\/p>\n

At issue is the Trump tax bill\u2019s treatment of so-called pass-through income \u2014 or income that is gleaned from partnerships, LLCs and S corporations. The 2017 Republican tax legislation dramatically slashed tax rates on income from such entities, generating a firestorm of criticism that it was a giveaway<\/a> to real estate moguls like Trump, U.S. Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) and other Republican backers of the legislation who have such entities in their personal portfolios. (The criticism became known as the \u201cCorker Kickback\u201d<\/a> scandal.)<\/p>\n

To reduce some of the cost of the overall tax cut bill \u2014 and to mute some of the specific criticism of the pass-through sections \u2014 GOP lawmakers included provisions prohibiting certain kinds of businesses from qualifying for the pass-through tax cut. One such business was \u201cfinancial services,\u201d and its removal countered assertions that the bill could enrich big banks.<\/p>\n

However, less than a year after passage of the tax legislation, the Treasury Department, headed by former banker Steve Mnuchin, issued the proposed rule<\/a> whose fine print asserts that \u201cfinancial services\u201d actually do not include banking. If that interpretation of the tax bill stands, hundreds of banks<\/a> operating as S corporations \u2014 as well as their owners \u2014 could claim the tax cut.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Don’t you know?  Only little people pay taxes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In an effort by Steve Mnuchin to benefit his buddies, the Treasury Secretary has declared that banks are not financial institutions: Do \u201cfinancial services\u201d include banking? Not according to the Trump administration, whose new rule, issued Wednesday by the Treasury Department, argues there is a difference \u2014 and then cites the alleged difference as a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[368,456,437,480,454],"class_list":["post-178825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-corruption","tag-finance","tag-regulation","tag-taxes","tag-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178825"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178825"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178825\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}