Oh, So THIS Is How Tax Policy Gets Made

A startling investigation by The New York Times reveals that the revolving door between big accounting firms and the Treasury Department is spinning—and bringing plenty of tax breaks for the firms’ clients. The newspaper says it works like this: an executive or lawyer at a big accounting company leaves to go work for the feds, where they work on new tax rules that benefit the clients of their former employer—and then they eventually leave public service and return to the firm, often in a bigger job. The newspaper says it documented at least 35 such round trips during the last four presidential administrations. If it sounds a little too cozy to you, former Treasury official Stephen Shay says you are not wrong. “Lawyers who come from the private sector need to learn who their new client is, and it’s not their former clients. It’s the American public,” he told the Times. “A certain percentage of people never make that switch. It’s really hard to make that switch when you know where you are going back in two years, and it’s to your old clients. The incentives are bad.”