The Blackstone Group would see its $25 billion (€18.5 billion) market value sink by as much as $10.5 billion should Congress pass a bill that would raise taxes on publicly traded financial services partnerships, Bloomberg reported.
The private equity firm said the Baucus-Grassley bill – authored by Senate Finance Committee chair Max Baucus, a Democrat from Montana, and Iowa Senator Charles Grassley, the committee’s ranking Republican – would cause Blackstone’s annual taxes to triple, representing an increase of $525 million.
Blackstone also said the bill would effectively decrease the government’s tax revenue because it would discourage firms from listing on public markets.
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Blackstone is spending handsomely on lobbyists to combat the proposed legislation, as well as a House bill that proposes increasing the tax on carried interest. In the first six month of the year, the firm spent $3.74 million employing 13 tax lobbyists, as compared with the $120,000 it spent on seven lobbyists in the first six months of 2006
Blackstone did not immediately return a request for comment.