CNBC – Last Thursday, Senator Carl Levin called the tax treatment of carried interest “the unconscionable tax break given to hedge-fund managers.”
This is the latest demonstration of how the debate over how to tax hedge fund managers is increasingly framed in moral language rather than economics. The reason for the reframing is simple: Raising taxes on hedge fund managers will produce negligible revenue gains for the government. So the only coherent case must rest on morality.
