Nothing concentrates the minds of liberals like a timely tax maneuver.
Indeed, the prospect of saving a fortune in taxes appears to be an aphrodisiac of sorts among some acolytes of President Obama. How else to explain the sudden marriage proposal by staunch Obama-backer and “Star Wars” creator George Lucas over the holidays? After selling his company to Disney for $4 billion just weeks before taxes on such a sale were set to go up by 8.8 percentage points, Lucas finally proposed to his girlfriend of seven years.
The new Mrs. Lucas, Mellody Hobson, is an Obama family favorite, dating back to their years in Chicago, and an impressive bundler of Obama campaign donors. No doubt the $350 million or so Lucas likely saved in taxes on the Lucasfilm sale will help make for one swanky wedding.
The rush to avoid the 23.8 percent tax on capital gains even appears to have had the power to bring about a rapprochement in the House of Burch. After a year in which dozens of “War of the Roses” articles were written about the bitter business battle between designer Tory and her ex-husband Chris, the two settled their feud on Dec. 31 with a tax-friendly transaction that allowed Chris to sell half of his 28 percent stake in the company for hundreds of millions of dollars before the tax hike kicked in.
By putting a fresh value on the fashion empire, the deal allowed Tory, a high-profile Obama supporter, to ring in 2013 as an official billionaire.
Of course, no tax-minimization grab seems more hypocritical than that of former Vice President Al Gore and his sale of Current TV. Gore, who often pontificated that the rich in America need to pay their “fair share,” rushed into the arms of Al-Jazeera — the Arab news outfit backed by the state of Qatar — reportedly in hopes of avoiding a hungrier tax man on Jan. 1. Although it appears Gore was a day late (the deal was inked Jan. 2), he certainly didn’t come up a dollar short — his failed Current TV fetched an astounding $500 million.
While it is not illegal and certainly prudent to move up income into a more favorable tax year, these moves by avid Obama supporters continue the example set by Warren Buffett — “Do what I say, not what I do.”
It’s the hypocrisy, not the tax-engineering, that rankles the rest of us.