New York Times, He Helped Big Companies Dodge Taxes. Now He’s Writing the Rules.:
In January 2022, the Internal Revenue Service was cracking down on a tax dodge from the agency’s “dirty dozen” list of abusive shelters. To fight back, promoters of the scheme turned to the lobbyist Ken Kies.
In a conference call with lawyers and financial advisers, Mr. Kies outlined plans to fight the I.R.S., including by capitalizing on his close relationship with a top agency official, according to a recording of the call obtained by The New York Times.
Now Mr. Kies has become the Treasury Department’s top tax policy official. The former veteran lobbyist, who has worked for some of America’s biggest companies, was confirmed by the Senate last month to serve as Treasury’s assistant secretary for tax policy.
It is not uncommon in President Trump’s Washington for lobbyists or other interested parties to get high-level positions at agencies where they once sought access on behalf of corporate clients. But Mr. Kies is not just any lobbyist. For decades, he has played an instrumental role in enabling some of the most lucrative and most important tax avoidance strategies used by multinational companies and the wealthiest Americans.
When the Clinton administration sought to stem the tide of companies shifting trillions of dollars of profits into offshore havens, Mr. Kies led the effort on behalf of a coalition of businesses to kill the regulation. In the George W. Bush administration, Mr. Kies successfully pushed for legislation to make such offshore tax dodges even easier to execute. During the Obama administration, he fended off another attempted crackdown on those strategies.
In 2017, as part of a sweeping package of tax cuts signed by Mr. Trump, Mr. Kies lobbied for a new tax break that provides a 20 percent deduction to certain businesses, which overwhelmingly benefits the richest Americans. And most recently, he advised the Trump Organization on a dispute with the I.R.S.
His clients have included companies like General Electric, Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, Chevron, Pfizer, Bank of America, Aetna, Anheuser Busch, Time Warner and Caterpillar as well as hedge funds like Millennium Management and Elliott Management, private equity firms like General Atlantic, foreign giants like Deutsche Bank and numerous insurance companies.
In his new role, Mr. Kies will oversee about 100 attorneys and economists at the Treasury Department’s Office of Tax Policy, a powerful corner of the federal government. The office issues regulations to help the government administer tax laws and provides guidance that can render the latest tax-dodging strategy a gold mine — or doom it.
With the passage of a $4.5 trillion tax cut package, Mr. Kies’s office will have the responsibility to write the rules to interpret and administer the new law — an enormously powerful role, particularly given the fast speed at which the legislation was written and passed.
That office “is incredibly important,” said Reuven Avi-Yonah, a tax law professor at the University of Michigan. “In the end, the final call is from the Office of Tax Policy and they call the shots.”
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