Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Ronald Reagan's Fancy Tax Manuevers

Henry Foux emails:
You may have overlooked something much more important than how much Clinton made for giving speeches.  After reagan left office, he was paid 1 million for a speech in Japan.  The next year, dateline interviewed him.  They had his 1040 and the million wasn't on it.  How come?  He smiled and said "some of my friends helped me with that"---and dateline let that pass without inquiring what he meant.  What he meant was, it was paid to a non-taxable domestic or foreign entity, not in his name, but he got it. 
Nothing wrong with taking advantage of loopholes, but keep in mind, during his presidency Reagan moved to close loopholes.

1 comment:

  1. Reagan, and most President's before him were post Presidency pikers in terms of loot procurement. This changed when Bush 1 kicked it off with his ties to outfits such as Carlyle Group, Global Crossing stock, and likely speaking fees, board memberships. Bill Clinton has set the 'cashing in' Gold standard though with his Clinton Global Initiative(which is for the most part tax exempt), giant speech paydays, and likely many ties we are not aware of. His Veep Al Gore has done very well peddling climate change. W appears to be coming on strong, apping Clinton, he has setup his own George W. Bush Institute in Dallas, is likely paid well for speeches, may be on boards, etc. One imagine's Barry will do the same when he exits the big house after this term(or third term?). Barry has already become wealthy selling his ghost written books, and who knows what else. He got the jump on the Prez money grab before even exiting!

    So Reagan was far from perfect, but again he was a piker in the world of post presidential cashing in.

    ReplyDelete