I found this quite interesting. Any company that was given over $5bil in government relief and still gives a bonus to it’s employees will have to pay a 90% tax on it. What I think is messed up is some of these people getting a bonus have no control over the say that they wanted the bailout. The bonuses some of these guys get are based on a contract, set in stone before the recession started. I think it should be taxed, but 90% is outrageous. So the guy who got $100 all year in bonuses will have to pay $90 back. But to play fair, I also think it’s messed up that the company is giving out bonuses in it’s current state.
It’s a lose/lose for AIG to be fair. They are under contract to give these bonuses to these people. If they don’t, they can be sued. If they do, they deal with Gov’t media.
On the flip side, they also have an issue where if they don’t pay these people the typical big bonus, they can leave and go somewhere else. It really sucks.
Another issue is that Dodds and friends put in a clause to let them GIVE the bonuses. The prick also lied about it too.
It’s a special situation because WE bailed them out. Regardless of the bonus type (performance or not), I don’t see how anyone can accept money after the horrible job that was done but that’s just me.
They should’ve let them go bankrupt.
The only possible way this could have been resolved decently is; company getting bailout -> CEOs paying bonuses out of pocket -> eployees refusing bonuses out of decency for tanking the company.
Obviously that didn’t happen.
I was reading yesterday that they were going to take all the money that went to bonuses back, by slapping a 100% tax on it. Guess they decided to leave some.
It only affects the bonuses over $100K, so unless you forgot to put in “,000” the 100$ bonus won’t be affected.
Secondly it doesn’t matter if they had a contract, they would have gotten nothing if the company went out of business. They needed the money to jump start the AIG program back on track instead of giving the obligated bonuses.
Logically, bonuses should only be given in an event of success, which obviously didn’t happen. Paying people millions of dollars ontop of their salary after the company FAILED is moronic.
The government found a way to allow AIG to fulfill their contracted demands, yet still get their money back in a cunning way.
the 90 percent tax is unconsitutional, its also known as a bill of attainder. article one section nine, clause 3.
what you should really be concerned with is the fact that the politicians specifically wrote clauses in the bill to ensure AIG could give out these bonuses.