‘Campaign Donors’
“From the Republican side of the aisle, you’re committed to killing the thing,” he says, adding that Democrats don’t want to tackle an issue affecting a handful of people. “And that handful are all in the class of campaign donors.”
Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg and Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., are among the business leaders who have set up GRATs, SEC filings show.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. helps so many clients use the trusts that the bank has a special unit dedicated to processing GRAT paperwork, says Joanne E. Johnson, a JPMorgan private-wealth banker. “I have a client who’s done 89 GRATs,” she says.
Goldman Sachs disclosed in a 2004 filing that 84 of the firm’s current and former partners used GRATs. Blankfein has transferred more than $50 million to family members with little or no gift tax due, according to calculations based on data in his SEC filings.
Charles Ergen, chairman of Dish Network Corp., and fashion designer Ralph Lauren passed more than $300 million each, calculations from SEC filings show.
Blankfein, Ergen, Lauren and Zuckerberg declined to comment.