TAXES/TREASURY/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Donald Trump’s pick to run the Treasury Department’s tax policy office said he wished he had acted differently when the accounting firm he helped lead was marketing aggressive tax shelters.
David Kautter was director of Ernst & Young LLP’s national tax practice when the firm was selling sophisticated tax shelters to business owners…
Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) said the committee’s vetting process found that Mr. Kautter was regularly informed of decisions that let Ernst & Young profit…
As assistant secretary for tax policy, Mr. Kautter would help shape the technical details of the administration’s tax agenda, including a rewrite of the business and individual tax codes. He would also oversee tax regulation.
Mr. Kautter, who is both a certified public accountant and a lawyer, was at Ernst & Young from 1982 to 2010, where he specialized in employee benefits. He led the firm’s national tax practice from 2000 to 2010.
During the boom, firms charged high fees for complex schemes with names such as ‘BLIPS,’ ‘DAD’ and ‘Cobra.’ They promised to shrink or wipe out taxes on transactions, such as the exercise of stock options or the sale of a long-held asset, by using techniques that were legal. Critics and the IRS argued that the shelters were shams that cheated Uncle Sam out of billions in taxes.”
-Richard Rubin and Laura Saunders, “Trump Tax Policy Nominee Regrets Previous Stance on Aggressive Shelters,” The Wall Street Journal online, July 18, 2017 02:37pm