Washington – GOP presidential hopeful Donald Trump has
a new target for his ire — other super-rich guys, the nation’s hedge fund
managers.
“I know a lot of bad people in this country that are making
a hell of a lot of money and not paying taxes,”
Trump told Time in an interview this week. “The tax law is
totally screwed up.”
"They're paying nothing, and it's ridiculous,"
Trump told CBS a few days later. “The hedge fund guys didn't build this
country. These are guys that shift paper around and they get lucky… The hedge
funds guys are getting away with murder.”’
John Brunjes, chief legal officer
at QSG Investment Management and a board member of the Connecticut Hedge Fund
Association, said Trump’s comments are “chock full of flaws and
errors.”
“It’s garbage in and garbage out,” Brunjes
said.
The hedge fund industry is important to Connecticut. Greenwich is called the “Hedge Fund Capital
of the World,” and the state is home to the nation’s largest hedge fund, $160
billion behemoth Bridgewater
Associates.
What Trump is criticizing is that hedge fund managers make
most of their millions and billions of dollars incarried interest
, a fee on the gains of the money they invest for other individuals and
institutions. That earned interest is taxed at 15 percent as capital gains by
the Internal Revenue Service. That tax rate is lower than the one most
Americans pay the IRS.