McIntyre: Remembering the 1986 U.S. tax reform act

Bob Mcintyre of Citizens for Tax Justice has written an article for Tax Notes looking at his role in the great tax reform effort of 1986. We've already noted McIntyre's major role in that reform, and quoted from Showdown at Gucci Gulch: Lawmakers, Lobbyists, and the Unlikely Triumph of Tax Reform, by Jeffrey H. Birnbum and Alan S. Murray:

A little-known public-interest lawyer named Robert McIntyre . . sitting at his computer in a cluttered little office in Washington, the scruffy McIntyre spent endless hours combing through the annual reports of the largest corporations in America. . . his result: 128 out of 250 large and profitable companies paid no federal income taxes in at least one year between 1981 and 1983."
. . .
He did not dine at plush, expense-account restaurants, nor did he spend much time buttonholing members of Congress. His $38,000 salary was a mere fraction of the much larger sums earned by his corporate lobbying foes. No matter. In the tax debates ahead, Bob McIntyre's one-man report would turn out to be more influential than all the firepower the corporate lobbyists could muster.

Now take a look at his view of the full story. One for our Offshore History page.