When our colleague Bennett Minton read an op-ed in Portland Business Journal from two out-of-town lobbyists extolling the benefits for Black investors and Black communities of IRC section 1031, he got riled. Googling around, he connected some dots. His results are outlined in a letter published August 30 in Tax Notes Federal, a premier national journal for tax practitioners that covers Congress.
Considering the racist past and present of Portland and Oregon, he’s still disappointed that a leading business publication would give space to the oft-repeated claim that trickle-down economics addresses racial equity. Bennett concludes: “When Black residents say ‘You don’t get it,’ this is perhaps something of what they mean, even though the front page of the August 27 Portland Business Journal teases three articles about the BIPOC community.” Here’s his letter in Tax Notes.