The Senate is going to vote very shortly on a resolution I put forward to overturn a new Trump administration policy regarding corporate taxes and partnerships. When you start using a whole bunch of Washington lingo about the corporate alternative minimum tax and income allocated across partnerships, people generally start to drift off into a deep sleep.
I’ll explain it as simply as I can. Here’s what this is all about.
The Trump administration treats the U.S. Treasury Department like Make-A-Wish for corporations and private equity.
Any giveaway or special treatment an ultra-wealthy corporate executive can dream of, Scott Bessent and his crew will move heaven and earth to make it happen.
With respect to the resolution we’re voting on this afternoon, the question is whether the most profitable corporations and private equity giants in America — those with profits north of $1 billion in a single year — ought to pay a minimum tax of 15 percent. And keep in mind that 15 percent is roughly the tax rate you pay if you’re a middle-income household. A nurse and a firefighter. Or a couple of school teachers. Democrats say yes, those hugely profitable firms absolutely should pay at 15 percent minimum rate. The Trump administration and Republicans say no.
And since Republicans have unified control of government these days, the big corporations got exactly what they wanted. The Trump administration tore a big hole in the minimum tax with this new policy change — a change that amounts to a $10.3 billion corporate handout, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.
It’s been the case for decades that these giant corporations play financial shell games to conceal their profits from the IRS. That’s how they winnow down their tax rates to single digits, or maybe zero. The same goes for private equity giants. They report to their shareholders and investors that profits are booming — everybody celebrates. Share prices and executive compensation go up. It’s party time in the C-Suite.
Then the financial chicanery begins. They fudge the math, and when it comes time to report earnings to the IRS, suddenly these corporations and private equity firms cry poverty. Forget that they told the shareholders they were swimming in cash. Suddenly they claim they owe little to nothing in taxes.
That kind of tax-rate gamesmanship is why Democrats created the corporate alternative minimum tax in 2022. This minimum tax has only been in place for a few years, but already, corporations and private equity firms are trying to rip it to pieces. And clearly, the Trump administration is helping them out. This $10.3 billion handout never got any debate here on the floor of the Senate. It didn’t come from any legislation. The administration created it out of thin air. It’s hidden inside a piece of federal rulemaking with a deceptively bureaucratic name: IRS Notice 2025-28.
And the topic is so bland, if you didn’t have a background in tax policy you might not catch on to what it’s all about. The notice rewrites the rules that govern how corporations and private equity firms count income from partnerships they own. They get to pick from six different methods of counting their cash — adding a whole lot of complexity to a part of the tax code that’s already mind-numbing. Essentially these firms get to play a game of choose-your-own-tax-rate.
This Trump policy encourages these giant firms to set up and abuse partnerships — layer after layer of them — solely for the purpose of dodging taxes. It’s got nothing to do with creating jobs or launching new product lines or areas of investment. It’s just a matter of moving money around on paper until you’re able to make your taxes go poof. These big, profitable corporations and private equity firms got a great deal from the Trump administration last year. This debate is about a single change in policy from the Treasury Department that handed them $10.3 billion.
If you ask me, they’ve already gotten enough from the people in charge.
The Trump administration and Republicans gave them $1 trillion in new tax breaks in the budget megabill they passed in July. Apparently that wasn’t enough. The Trump administration junked an effort to crack down on another partnership abuse — what’s known as basis-shifting. That’s when businesses dodge taxes by moving assets around from one entity they control to another. Again, this provides no value to our economy, it’s strictly a tax game. But the Trump administration doesn’t have a problem with it, so it green-lit the tax games and said there wouldn’t be any crackdown. That was worth $100 billion to these same corporations and private equity giants.
Today I ask my colleagues, when is enough, enough?
Millions and millions of families in Oregon and all across the country are struggling to get by, buried under the rising cost of living. Federal deficits are going through the roof. The job market is looking awfully shaky. Young people feel like there’s no opportunity for them to get ahead. It’s a slap in the face to all those Americans every time the Trump administration gives another handout to corporations and the ultra-wealthy.
They believe the system is rigged, and they’re right.
It’s rigged because the Trump administration — as I said at the outset — treats the U.S. Treasury like Make-A-Wish for corporations and private equity.
The ultra-wealthy and the mega-donors get everything they want. Everybody else gets short shrift.
The resolution I’ve brought before the Senate is a better approach. This isn’t about the federal government clobbering these big corporations with crippling taxes. We’re talking about a minimum contribution — a 15 percent tax rate that a lot of people wouldn’t even consider to be a fair share for these big corporations.
The biggest, most profitable corporations and private equity firms don’t need a special carveout. They don’t need any more Donald Trump giveaways.
So I urge my colleagues to support my resolution — let’s block this latest handout to corporations and private equity giants that really do not need it.
A web version of this statement is here.
###