Posts Tagged pension funds

Hedge funds, private equity expect tax hike

Posted by Tetyana Matychak in Budget on May 19th, 2010

Private equity, real estate and hedge fund managers are increasingly resigned to a tax increase on their profits as U.S. lawmakers get set to vote next week on a long-delayed measure.

At issue is a change in the tax treatment of profits earned by partnership fund managers, known as “carried interest.” The measure would treat the profits as ordinary income subject to a 35 percent rate, more the double the 15 percent rate they are currently taxed at as capital gains.

The tax change, which lobbyists have managed to beat back for three years, has gained steam as lawmakers hunt for revenue to fund other popular tax breaks for business that have expired. Many lobbyists and former opponents now see passage of an increase as inevitable.

“Many people are resigned because it is round four,” said Francois Hechinger, a partner at BDO Seidman advising private equity and venture capital clients..

He added that they are still putting up a fight to try to soften the impact. “If it was really their choice they wouldn’t give up on it at all.”

The $20 billion or so of revenue that the tax change could raise over a decade would help pay for a politically popular group of tax breaks for individuals and business, including a corporate research and development tax credit. Read the rest of this entry »

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Why Treasury Needs a Plan B for Mortgages

Posted by Tetyana Matychak in Banks on December 8th, 2009

AFTER months of playing pretend, the Treasury Department conceded last week that the Home Affordable Modification Program, its plan to aid troubled homeowners by changing the terms of their mortgages, was a dud. The 10-month-old program is going nowhere, the Treasury said, because big institutions charged with implementing it are dragging their feet.

“The banks are not doing a good enough job,” said Michael S. Barr, assistant Treasury secretary for financial institutions, in an article published last Sunday in The New York Times.

After the government spent hundreds of billions of dollars bailing out banks, the Obama administration rolled out the $75 billion loan modification plan to show its support for beleaguered homeowners. But if the proof of the pudding is in the eating, homeowners are going hungry.

A stalled loan modification plan might not be worrisome if the foreclosure crisis were abating. Yet at the end of September, a record 14.4 percent of borrowers were either in foreclosure or delinquent on their mortgages, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported.

It’s time for the government to acknowledge the flaws in its program and create one that might actually succeed. Only then will the supply of homes for sale, and the pressure on prices associated with that overhang, be reduced. Read the rest of this entry »

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