By Richard Rubin
WASHINGTON -- A Treasury Department official deeply involved in
implementing the new tax law left the government unexpectedly this
week.
Dana Trier, a retired New York attorney praised by fellow tax
lawyers in both parties, was a deputy assistant secretary for tax
policy, putting him near the center of administration
decision-making about how to write the crucial and highly technical
rules stemming from the new Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
Accountants, tax lawyers and businesses have been watching his
actions and speeches closely for clues on how the Trump
Administration will enforce complex new deductions for pass-through
businesses, restrictions on business interest deductions and other
matters.
As recently as Tuesday, he spoke publicly about the stream of
rules poised to come from the U.S. in the next year. The Treasury
needs to clarify vague sections of the law, which went from draft
to reality in less than two months.
Mr. Trier's departure was confirmed by Treasury spokesman Tony
Sayegh on Friday. Mr. Trier was part of a large team that will
continue to work without him. Treasury officials expect to release
a calculator for paycheck withholding next week.
Tax-focused publications had previously written about some of
Mr. Trier's remarks that were critical of parts of the new tax law,
including a speech earlier this month in San Diego at a conference
sponsored by the American Bar Association's Tax Section.
On Thursday, in the course of reporting an article about Mr.
Trier, The Wall Street Journal relayed to a Treasury spokeswoman
further comments he had made; his departure became public on
Friday.
In San Diego, Mr. Trier had said people looking at pieces of the
new law sometimes asked him whether lawmakers could have reasonably
meant to write it the way they did.
"We're going to have trouble with about half the legislation if
we apply that standard," said Mr. Trier, whose name rhymes with
clear.
Late Friday, Mr. Trier, 69 years old, said he and Assistant
Secretary David Kautter agreed that he should leave.
"Between these public comments and the constant friction with
the bureaucratic elements of the government, I really just
think...it was time to go," Mr. Trier said. "I have enough of a big
ego to think that they've lost something when they've lost me, but
I think they can do it."
Mr. Trier's performances veered from the cautious style of other
Treasury and IRS officials on the tax-law speaking circuit. The
rest of them talk carefully about soliciting input and gathering
feedback, avoiding saying much that was pithy or opinionated.
Mr. Trier spoke in a stream-of-consciousness combination of
self-aggrandizement and self-deprecation, punctuated with
one-liners and technical references to Internal Revenue Code
sections.
"I'm a trained assassin," Mr. Trier told an audience of
partnership and real-estate lawyers over grilled chicken salad and
cold soup in San Diego.
It was a reference to the decades he spent as a private-sector
lawyer finding holes in the tax code to use to the advantage of
clients.
On Friday, Mr. Trier said some parts of the law weren't
well-thought-out, including limits on carried interest, but that
most of it is "sophisticated" and could be successfully
implemented.
In San Diego, he joked that the only administration official who
hadn't weighed in on tax policy was first lady Melania Trump. He
recalled leaving early bill-drafting sessions in the House of
Representatives with fears about how the proposals would be
impossible to administer. He mused aloud, in front of the country's
most accomplished tax planners, about how the tax law would be a
"feast" for tax planning.
But Mr. Trier said some of the worst fears about loopholes in
the new law were overblown.
"Those games that people play," he said in San Diego, "were
games that I played."
He worked for many years at Davis, Polk and Wardwell LLP in New
York, where he was a senior tax partner with broad expertise across
the tax code, especially in complex transactions and
derivatives.
After he retired, Mr. Trier taught at the University of Miami's
law school and pursued a graduate degree in applied economics at
Johns Hopkins University. Last year, he rejoined the Treasury
Department, where he had worked in the late 1980s implementing the
1986 tax overhaul.
"I'm dumb enough," he said in San Diego, "to try to be doing the
same job over again."
Mr. Trier, a frequent Republican donor, gave to GOP presidential
candidates John Kasich, Marco Rubio and Carly Fiorina in 2015 and
2016, according to federal records. He made his first donation to
Donald Trump on Nov. 10, 2016, two days after the election.
Before his departure, Republican and Democratic tax lawyers said
they appreciated having a skilled, veteran tax practitioner in that
job.
"Dana is really one of the rock stars of tax," said Joshua
Odintz of Baker & McKenzie, who worked for Senate Finance
Committee Democrats and in the Obama administration's Treasury
Department. "He really is one of the types of tax lawyers we would
want in a position to help implement the new tax law."
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 23, 2018 18:55 ET (23:55 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.