As my colleague Bob Kuttner explains today, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) shielded the private equity industry from the crippling burden of minor taxation in the Inflation Reduction Act. Kuttner is right that tax policy isn’t really a good way to deal with the scourge of private equity; repealing the exemptions to the Investment Company Act of 1940 and ending the use of investment fund leverage would do the job much more cleanly. Fortunately, the industry is getting weaker amid sell-offs, so there may be a better time to deal with private equity down the road.
