Comments on: Obama Hints at Ending Capital Gains Taxes for VCs

By: Ian A

Ian A — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 18:51:29 +0000

"Primack interpreted it to suggest that angels and VCs investing in early stages would likely benefit — provided Obama doesn’t also alter the tax treatment of carried interest from capital gains to ordinary income."

Reality: it just happened as of 2/25. Marginal rates on VCs will move from 15% to, oh... somewhere in the area of 55%. That is absolutely terrifying. The impact on American innovation and the offshoring of venture funding will be... absolutely staggering.

By: Hogan

Hogan — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 21:39:10 +0000

ah good… I have been writing Obama for 6 months pushing my 5 point plan to economic reform:
1. teach business and investing at the high school level. A “how to achieve the American Dream” string of courses.
2. Eliminate all taxes on investments, to promote investing in America by foreign businesses and businessmen. Just remember people, they can’t pick up the land and take it with them. It will always be American and for rent
3. Listen to T. Boone Pickens, and give grant money to American Automakers to get us off oil.
4. legalize marijuana- not only saves money fighting it, but creates money by taxing it. In addition to that, organized crime such as street gangs no longer profit from it’s sales to buy guns and fancy cars with to lure poor young people into their ranks.
5. Get rid of NAFTA and raise taxes on any country who abuses it’s workers and doesn’t pay them a living wage. Such as China for example. Raise taxes to the point where their products are just as expensive as American products
If these 5 things were to be done, the Economy would recover within 1 year’s time

By: Richard Stum[

Richard Stum[ — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:33:22 +0000

Unfortunately, Obama has been a supporter of treating carried interest as normal income which would dampen institutional investment. Also, will it apply to investments made by individuals or investments made by institutions like VC funds? The details will count for a lot on a plan like this

By: Environmental Capital - WSJ.com : Green Ink: Oil Falls Again, and Gazprom Visits Alaska

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 12:14:51 +0000

[...] energy, at Greentech Media. Barack Obama continues trawling for the clean-tech vote, with a hint of capital gains tax cuts for VCs, at Earth2Tech. And will offshore wind power be the silver bullet for U.S. renewable energy?, at [...]