US private equity firms face tax probe
New York, September 2, 2012
At least a dozen US private equity firms have been subpoenaed by the New York state attorney general as part of a probe into whether a widely used tax strategy that saved these firms hundreds of millions of dollars is proper, a source said.
Among the firms that were subpoenaed are Bain Capital, KKR & Co LP, TPG Capital LP, Apollo Global Management and Silver Lake Partners LP, the source said.
Bain was once headed by Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate who hopes to unseat President Barack Obama in the Nov. 6 election.
The subpoenas, which were sent out in July, seek documents related to the conversion of fees these private equity firms charge for managing investors' assets into fund investments, the source said. This means the investigation predates the release last month of confidential Bain fund documents by Gawker that revealed such a practice.
The practice is known as a "management fee waiver." As fund investments, the income would be taxed as capital gains, which attract rates around 15 percent. Without the conversion, the fees would be ordinary income, taxed at rates around 35 percent.
Other firms that received subpoenas include Sun Capital Partners; Clayton, Dubilier & Rice; Crestview Partners; H.I.G. Capital; Vestar Capital Partners; and Providence Equity Partners.
Jennifer Givner, a spokeswoman for New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's office, declined to comment. The firms were not immediately available for comment.
The investigation comes in the midst of a heated US presidential election campaign. Romney has been scrutinised for his tenure as head of Bain, through which he amassed much of his estimated $250 million fortune.
The timing of the probe and Schneiderman's credentials as a Democrat could raise eyebrows in political circles.
Romney's record at Bain is already a target of attack by President Barack Obama's campaign and has put an uncomfortable spotlight on the industry. A probe into a potential tax dodge by the industry could further play into the Democrats' hands.
Romney earned about $13 million in income over the past two years from carried interest, or the portion of a private equity fund's profits that goes to its managers, according to his campaign, which has issued a statement denying that he ever profited from using a management fee waiver.
With the latest probe, Schneiderman, who has been in office for less than two years, follows in the footsteps of predecessors Andrew Cuomo and Eliot Spitzer, who played the role of sheriff of Wall Street.
Schneiderman, who is co-chair of a mortgage crisis unit under Obama, has looked into mortgage practices at banks. Other high-profile cases involving financial institutions include an investigation of possible manipulation of the Libor benchmark international lending rates by banks.
The tax probe is being conducted out of the New York Attorney General's Taxpayer Protection Bureau, which was set up in early 2011. The agency was established "to root out fraud and return money illegally stolen from New York taxpayers at no additional cost to the state," according to the AG's website. - Reuters
