Meet Gregory Nickerson

By Ken Silverstein

Remember that huge $140 billion corporate tax break Congress passed in 2004, with the Orwellian name of the “American Jobs Creation Act”? Described by Senator John McCain as “the worst example of the influence of special interests that I have ever seen,” the bill's 600-plus pages were chock full of pork for pharmaceutical companies, the tobacco industry, cruise ship operators, and defense firms, among others.

A key architect of that bill was Gregory Nickerson, who at the time was Tax Counsel to then-Congressman Bill Thomas, the California Republican who headed the House Ways and Means Committee. (Nickerson simultaneously served as Staff Director to Congressman Jim McCrery of Louisiana, who chaired the Subcommittee on Select Revenue Measures.)

Now, guess who became a lobbyist almost as soon as the ink was dry on the Act? And has been signing up firms who benefited from his handiwork ever since?

Correct. Nickerson is now a principal with Angus & Nickerson, a consulting firm that “identifies tax issues, crafts legislative solutions, works with Congress to get legislation enacted, and resolves issues through the regulatory process by working with Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service.” Nickerson left his job at Ways and Means in February of 2005, which is the same month that Angus & Nickerson signed up its first client. His partner is Barbara Angus, who also left her job at the Treasury Department—she served as International Tax Counsel for the Office of Tax Policy—in February of 2005.

The Act's key measure was a one-time provision that reduced the corporate tax rate on overseas earnings from 35 percent to 5.25 percent. When it was being debated, the Ways and Means Committee released a list of firms that supported the Act. The list included General Electric, Hewlett Packard, Proctor & Gamble, and Johnson & Johnson, all which are estimated to have netted multi-billion dollar savings as a result of the Act's passage.

Coincidentally, no doubt, General Electric signed up with Angus & Nickerson just weeks after it opened for business. (GE, the firm's second client, paid the lobby shop $120,000 for 2005, a real steal given its tax savings under the Act.) The other three companies mentioned above also retained Angus & Nickerson, though they waited a few more months—perhaps for appearance sake—before doing so.

Many other firms show up on both the Ways and Means Committee list of American Jobs Creation Act advocates and Angus & Nickerson's client list. Among them are Coca-Cola (the firm's third client, which retained the lobby shop for “general representation on tax issues before congress and the administration, including issues under the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004”), Alpharam (4th), Time Warner (9th), Citigroup (10th), Caterpillar, Northrop Grumman, Pepsico, and Wal-Mart.

In other words, Nickerson and Angus helped write the tax code and then richly profited from their government employment by helping private companies benefit from the very loopholes they inserted. And now, according to disclosure reports, the firm lobbies Congress and the Treasury Department, where the principals once worked (though Nickerson and Angus presumably don't directly lobby their old offices). Both Nickerson and Angus have been making generous political contributions as well. The pair combined has doled out more than $50,000, with about $11,000 of that going to McCrery—the ranking Republican on the Ways and Means Committee—or the congressman's Leadership PAC, the Committee for The Preservation of Capitalism.

Supporters of the American Jobs Creation Act had argued that with all their tax savings, the companies that benefited would rush out and hire lots of new workers. But it didn't turn out that way. “One thing is clear,” Business Week reported in August of 2005. “The money piling in from abroad as the result of the Jobs Creation Act has done little to actually spur hiring. In fact, six of the 10 companies repatriating the biggest totals are axing workers in the U.S. They include HP [Hewlett Packard], which announced July 19 that it would cut its head count by 14,500 in the U.S.”

Incidentally, this isn't the first time Nickerson and Angus have worked the revolving door. According to a biography posted on the firm's web site, “Prior to joining the Committee on Ways and Means, Mr. Nickerson spent two years as the Tax Counsel for the National Foreign Trade Council working closely with NFTC's 450 multinational corporations, the Treasury Department and Congress on international tax legislation and tax treaties. Prior to that, Mr. Nickerson spent seven years as a trial attorney for the Department of Justice, Tax Division and the Internal Revenue Service.”

Before joining Treasury, Barbara Angus “was a partner in the Federal Tax Policy Group of PricewaterhouseCoopers, where she represented clients on a wide range of tax legislative and tax planning matters. From 1995 to 1998, Ms. Angus was Business Tax Counsel for the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation. As a senior staff member of the Joint Committee, Ms. Angus had primary responsibility for all international aspects of tax legislation and for the review and analysis of tax treaties considered by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. She was previously a partner with Kirkland & Ellis in Chicago.”

How, one wonders, can these people keep track of which hat they're wearing--private sector or public sector--at any given time? Or perhaps they simply don't know recognize the difference.

(I called Angus & Nickerson's office and was told to leave a message for Nickerson. He hasn't returned the call; if he does, I'll update this story.)