August 9, 2007 — Iowa Senator Charles Grassley said he intends to link his proposal to boost taxes on publicly traded buyout firms to a fix of the alternative minimum tax, a pairing that may make it harder for opponents of the measure to vote against it.

“This is going to come when we deal with the alternative minimum tax,” Grassley, a Republican, said in an interview yesterday. He said the bill deals with “issues of equity and fairness.”

The strategy would partner legislation to raise taxes on publicly traded partnerships such as The Blackstone Group to a measure shielding 23 million mostly middle-income households from an AMT increase this year. It’s a tactic that has worked in the past: last year Republicans successfully paired an AMT relief measure to an extension of a capital-gains tax cut that was opposed by Democrats.

Grassley, 73, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, and the committee’s Democratic Chairman, Max Baucus of Montana, introduced the bill that would make buyout and hedge-fund firms that go public pay taxes as corporations at rates as high as 35 percent. Under the current system, only the partners in these firms pay taxes and they do so at the 15 percent capital-gains rate.

Last week, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel said he intends to combine related legislation that would more than double the personal taxes for managers of private-equity firms and hedge funds with a measure curtailing the AMT.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 18th, 2007 at 3:29 pm While Dave was in Money. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.