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Carl Icahn launches $150 million PAC to push corporate tax reform

by Bradford Richardson - 10/21/15 3:55 PM ET

Billionaire magnate Carl Icahn is launching a super-PAC to push Congress on tax reform, he said in a letter posted to his website Wednesday.

The Wall Street mogul, who has endorsed Republican Donald Trump for president and said he would be willing to serve as secretary of Treasury in a Trump administration, pledged a $150 million initial contribution toward the super-PAC.

{mosads}He said the group will “hold Senators and Congressmen accountable for the current gridlock in Congress that prevents important legislation from being passed.”

Icahn said he will work to end the corporate “exodus” currently underway in the U.S.

“The first thing the PAC will do is focus on the pernicious effects that are occurring and will continue to occur as a result of Congress’s failure to immediately stop so many of our great companies from leaving our country,” Icahn said in the letter. “This exodus has often been called ‘corporate tax inversions.’ ”

Icahn said he sent the letter to the House Ways and Means Committee, the Senate Finance Committee, the Majority and Minority Leaders in the Senate and the Speaker of the House.

He called on Congress to include an international tax reform plan in its highway bill that will significantly reduce the “double tax” on American corporations that want to bring foreign-held money back to the U.S.

“We are the only country in the world that does this, and it’s counterproductive because it creates an incentive to keep the money abroad,” Icahn said in the letter. “A lower ‘double tax’ would solve this problem.”

The billionaire said inversions cost Americans a half trillion dollars in market value, hundreds of millions in tax dollars and tens of thousands of jobs.

“If this exodus is allowed to accelerate, there will be disastrous consequences for our already fragile economy, as well as meaningful and unnecessary job losses,” Icahn wrote.

Tags Carl Icahn Donald Trump