“Tax-Dodging Consultant” Is Now the US Treasury’s Top Tax Policy Official

Title is a bit sensationalised or misleading. Because there’s no actual role with that name. But yeah this is fucked.

A corporate lobbyist who for decades has helped major companies and rich Americans dodge taxes is now serving as the U.S. Treasury Department’s top tax policy official, a position in which he will write rules implementing the newly passed Republican budget law.

That role is “enormously powerful,” The New York Times’ Jesse Drucker wrote in a Monday profile of Ken Kies, whom the GOP-controlled U.S. Senate confirmed as assistant treasury secretary for tax policy in a party-line vote last month. President Donald Trumpselected Kies for the position in January.

You know, in a sane country this would be a reasonable headline. Tax dodging is often done legally if dishonestly. By hiring someone who is particularly adept at navigating those loopholes that person could effectively shut them down without opening new ones. It takes a thief to catch a thief and so on. Unfortunately this isn't a sane country so I have to assume he's just going to make the loopholes just straight up holes to make things even worse