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tax dodging
'Wallowing in Corruption': Lobbyist Who Helped Ultra-Rich Dodge Taxes Now Heads Trump Tax Office
"By putting a professional tax dodging consultant in charge of their tax law, Republicans are continuing to make their intentions crystal clear—this law is a gift to billionaires and huge corporations."
Jul 15, 2025
A corporate lobbyist who for decades has helped major companies and rich Americans dodge taxes is now serving as the U.S. Treasury Department's top tax policy official, a position in which he will write rules implementing the newly passed Republican budget law.
That role is "enormously powerful," The New York Times' Jesse Drucker wrote in a Monday profile of Ken Kies, whom the GOP-controlled U.S. Senate confirmed as assistant treasury secretary for tax policy in a party-line vote last month. President Donald Trump selected Kies for the position in January.
The Republican budget measure, which President Donald Trump signed into law earlier this month, contains around $4.5 trillion in tax cuts that will flow disproportionately to the wealthiest Americans over the next decade, according to nonpartisan analysts.
"By putting a professional tax-dodging consultant in charge of their tax law, Republicans are continuing to make their intentions crystal clear—this law is a gift to billionaires and huge corporations like those Ken Kies has spent his career looking out for," Leor Tal, campaign director for the progressive advocacy group Unrig Our Economy, said in a statement Monday.
"As families struggle with rising prices from Trump's tariffs and face devastating cuts to Medicaid and SNAP," Tal added, "Republicans are doubling down on helping the richest of the rich, while working people pay the price."
In his role as a lobbyist whose client list has included Goldman Sachs, Pfizer, Microsoft, and other corporate behemoths, Kies has helped secure major tax giveaways for large companies and wealthy Americans—including in the 2017 Trump-GOP tax law that the new Republican budget package extends.
"In the George W. Bush administration, Mr. Kies successfully pushed for legislation to make such offshore tax dodges even easier to execute. During the Obama administration, he fended off another attempted crackdown on those strategies," Drucker wrote Monday. "In 2017, as part of a sweeping package of tax cuts signed by Mr. Trump, Mr. Kies lobbied for a new tax break that provides a 20% deduction to certain businesses, which overwhelmingly benefits the richest Americans."
Drucker noted that in his new position, Kies "will oversee about 100 attorneys and economists at the Treasury Department's Office of Tax Policy, a powerful corner of the federal government."
"The office issues regulations to help the government administer tax laws and provides guidance that can render the latest tax-dodging strategy a gold mine—or doom it," he added.
Kies previously served as managing director of the Federal Policy Group, a lobbying firm at which he "delivered significant legislative and regulatory results for his clients, which include major corporations, trade associations, and coalitions of companies with common objectives," according to a since-removed biography of Kies.
"Mr. Kies has led coalition efforts to enact legislation responding to the World Trade Organization's ruling against U.S. foreign sales corporation benefits, to avert enactment of broad 'corporate tax shelter' legislation that would have an adverse impact on legitimate business transactions, and to reverse Treasury regulations targeting 'hybrid' arrangements of U.S. multinational corporations, among other projects," the biography stated.
Highlighting the Times profile of Kies, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) wrote Monday that the Trump administration is "wallowing in corruption."
"Five trillion dollars in tax cuts for the wealthiest, written and administered by the wealthiest," she wrote. "On the backs of stripping healthcare and food from working and poor people. Shame on you."
In addition to implementing the new Trump-GOP law, Kies could be positioned to help deliver another sizable tax break to the rich.
The Washington Post's Jeff Stein reported last week that on the heels of passage of the GOP budget law, right-wing organizations and Republican lawmakers are set to push the Trump administration to unilaterally "drastically reduce what investors pay on their capital gains."
"The plan rests on changing how the Treasury Department calculates those taxes," Stein wrote. "The highest-earning 1% of Americans would receive 86% of the benefits from indexing capital gains to inflation, while the bottom 80% of income earners would get just 1% of the benefits, Penn Wharton projected in 2018."
Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, wrote in response to Stein's reporting that "after gutting health care for millions of Americans and passing massive tax breaks for billionaires, Republicans are now working on even MORE tax breaks for the ultra-rich."
"They aren't interested in fighting for working families—only their rich friends," Boyle added.
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Why Corporate Leaders Who Strip Companies for Parts Have No Business in Government
When corporations prioritize shareholder payouts over real investment, society loses—but when governments adopt the same model, the consequences are compounded.
May 13, 2025
There’s a familiar myth in American politics: that of the no-nonsense business leader who cuts through red tape and gets results. It fuels the belief that running a country is just like running a company—and that executives, with their boardroom instincts and bottom-line mindset, are exactly what government needs.
But that myth collapses under the weight of what corporate leadership has actually become—and what happens when it migrates into public office.
Economist William Lazonick has spent decades analyzing that transformation. He argues that corporate America has abandoned its commitment to innovation and productive investment, replacing it with a laser focus on cost-cutting, price gouging, and tax dodging to boost profits so they can do more stock buybacks—all in the name of maximizing shareholder value. Most executives are no longer rewarded for building durable businesses or contributing to the real economy—they’re rewarded for how efficiently they extract value from the companies that they control.
We’re not just talking about fragile companies. We’re talking about the erosion of public institutions, rising inequality, and a democracy that serves fewer and fewer people.
Lazonick calls this model a “scourge,” blaming it for weakening U.S. technological leadership, driving massive inequality, and destabilizing the broader economy. Now, he warns, this same extractive logic is infiltrating the federal government.
The ongoing 2025 budget debates are a case in point. Under the guise of “efficiency” and “fiscal responsibility,” the Trump administration has proposed slashing $163 billion from federal spending—cuts that would gut education, housing, and medical research—all of which are essential for value creation. The language mirrors what executives have long used to justify layoffs, offshoring, and disinvestment. But in this case, it’s not a corporation being hollowed out. It’s the state itself.
Lazonick argues that this shouldn’t surprise anyone. “Because these people have gotten away with looting corporations, they’ve come to believe it’s their right to loot the state,” he says. Even among tech figures who’ve built or have led the building of real products—like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg—Lazonick notes a mindset of entitlement: “They treat the resulting wealth as entirely their own, as if they alone earned it.” That thinking now shapes public policy, where deregulation and budget cuts benefit the wealthy while dismantling protections for workers and consumers.
Take Musk, for example. As head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), he’s worked to weaken regulatory agencies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the National Labor Relations Board—both of which would typically oversee parts of his business empire. At the same time, his companies continue securing massive federal contracts, including a potential $2 billion FAA deal, raising serious concerns about conflicts of interest. As Lazonick and colleague Matt Hopkins argue in a recent piece for the Institute for New Economic Thinking, Musk has advanced through a “perilous system of corporate governance” driven by shareholder primacy—fueling inequality and eroding America’s technological leadership. His tenure at DOGE is simply more of the same: dismantling oversight, channeling public resources into private ventures, and treating government as just another asset to extract.
Musk’s corporate empire—Tesla, SpaceX, and Neuralink—owes much of its success to taxpayer-funded research and government support. Tesla was launched with the help of federal loans and electric vehicle subsidies. SpaceX builds on decades of NASA-funded R&D and now depends on billion-dollar public contracts. Even Neuralink draws heavily on publicly funded neuroscience work. Despite the mythology of private-sector genius, these companies are deeply rooted in public investment. Yet the public sees little return.
And the mindset isn’t limited to Musk. President Donald Trump and his family are taking the corporate model Lazonick describes to new heights, using government as a platform for private enrichment. Eric Trump recently promoted the family’s latest crypto venture, making the president a major crypto player while shaping federal policy toward that very industry. The Trump family’s 60% stake in World Liberty Financial, now attracting major investment, has intensified concerns over conflicts of interest. Meanwhile, under Eric’s leadership, the Trump Organization has struck a controversial $5.5 billion deal with a Qatari state firm to build a luxury golf resort—despite Trump’s previous pledge to avoid foreign deals while in office.
Trump has also issued executive orders to “streamline” federal procurement and contract reviews. While marketed as anti-waste measures, critics see them as a backdoor for directing government business to favored contractors, including those with family ties. The line between public service and private gain has rarely been thinner.
Lazonick warns that the stakes are high. When corporations prioritize shareholder payouts over real investment, society loses—but when governments adopt the same model, the consequences are compounded. We’re not just talking about fragile companies. We’re talking about the erosion of public institutions, rising inequality, and a democracy that serves fewer and fewer people.
To reverse course, Lazonick argues we need deep structural reform in how corporations—and by extension, governments—operate. That means banning stock buybacks; reining in executive compensation tied to manipulated stock performance; and reinvesting profits in innovation, workers, and communities. It means embracing a stakeholder model of governance that sees corporations not just as wealth machines, but as stewards of social value.
Because if we don’t fix these systemic flaws, the looting won’t stop. It’ll only deepen—and spread.
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'This Is Welfare for Billionaire Tax Cheats': Trump IRS Ditches Effort to Close Major Loophole
"Donald Trump is a known tax cheat, and it's clear his core economic agenda is to turn the government into an ATM for his billionaire pals," said Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden.
Apr 18, 2025
The Trump administration quietly announced Thursday that it is abandoning a Biden-era effort to close a loophole that allows large business partnerships to repeatedly manipulate the value of their assets to minimize their tax obligations.
The Internal Revenue Service and Treasury Department announced the decision in a notice that received little attention in the mainstream press. The notice states that the administration, guided by an executive order President Donald Trump signed in February, intends to scrap so-called basis-shifting regulations that were finalized at the end of former President Joe Biden's White House term.
As the Biden Treasury Department explained last year, it was targeting a tactic whereby "a single business that operates through many different legal entities ('related parties') enters into a set of transactions that manipulate partnership tax rules to maximize tax deductions and minimize tax liability."
"These transactions defy congressional intent to avoid tax liability with little to no other economic consequences for the participating businesses," the department said. "For example, a partnership might shift tax basis from property that does not generate tax deductions (such as stock or land) to property that does (such as equipment). Taxpayers may also use these techniques to depreciate the same asset over and over."
The Biden administration estimated that the crackdown on basis-shifting would have raised $50 billion in federal revenue from wealthy taxpayers over a 10-year period.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement Thursday that "this is a ridiculous loophole that allows the ultra-rich to dodge taxes by shifting assets around on paper while adding zero value to our economy whatsoever."
"Donald Trump is a known tax cheat, and it's clear his core economic agenda is to turn the government into an ATM for his billionaire pals, but that doesn't make it any less outrageous that his administration would reopen this kind of tax loophole for the rich while simultaneously wrecking Social Security and attacking Medicaid," Wyden added. "This is welfare for billionaire tax cheats and massive corporations, plain and simple."
The impending removal of IRS regulations targeting the rich comes as the administration is weaponizing the agency against nonprofits and immigrants and as congressional Republicans work on a legislative package that will likely call for massive tax breaks for the wealthy and large corporations.
A recent analysis by the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that the GOP tax package could cost $7 trillion over the next decade, notwithstanding Republicans' misleading efforts to make the tax cuts appear free of cost.
While some congressional Republicans have floated the idea of allowing the marginal tax rate for the highest-earners to return to its previous level of 39.6% at the end of 2025, the proposal appears unlikely to garner enough support in both chambers.
"I think it is a mistake to raise taxes, and I don't believe Republicans are going to do that," Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told NBC News earlier this week.
According to Bloomberg, the GOP's tax plan "will almost certainly" reflect "the priorities of a small minority of high-earning constituents in a handful of districts in New York, New Jersey, and California" as Republicans work to raise the state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap.
Bloomberg noted that the SALT deduction "is a write-off that most Americans will never claim, even in the districts of the lawmakers fighting hardest to increase the tax break."
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