Tax and Accounting Center http://taxandaccounting.bna.com/btac/display/batch_print_display.adp In a Feb. 25 article written for the Wall Street Journal, Camp said the proposal “can clean up provisions like ‘carried interest’ that allow certain private-equity firms to get the investment-income tax rate on what anyone else would call normal wage income.” Benchmark for Future Bills? The carried-interest proposal comes on top of a Camp plan to impose a tax on the assets of the largest U.S. banks and insurers. Even though his plan faces long odds in Congress this year, the proposal will become a benchmark for tax policy. Under current law, carried interest, or the profits share received by private equity managers, gets treated as capital gains, with a top basic rate of 20 percent as opposed to the ordinary income rate of 39.6 percent. Obama and other Democrats have been trying since 2007 to change that law with little success. Camp is wrapping a change to carried interest inside a reconstruction of the tax code that would lower tax rates and broaden the tax base. Steve judge, president and chief executive officer of the Private Equity Growth Capital Council, an industry trade group, said Camp's proposal was “disappointing.” “Key policy makers from both parties have already made clear that the discussion around this draft proposal will be brief,” Judge said in a statement Feb. 25. “Nevertheless, Chairman Camp's proposal penalizes long-term capital investment, which he and other members of the House Ways and Means Committee have purported to support.” With assistance from Richard Rubin in Washington. To contact the reporter: Brett Ferguson in Washington at [email protected] To contact the editor responsible for this story: Cheryl Saenz at [email protected] Texts of the discussion draft and the section-by-section summary are in TaxCore. Contact us at http://www.bna.com/contact/index.html or call 1-800-372-1033 ISSN 1947-3923 Copyright © 2014, The Bureau of National Affairs, In