Cheney profits from Katrina

It's all perfectly legal, but ...

It appears that the VP is a major beneficiary of the Hurricane Katrina tax relief act. In particular, he claimed $6.8 million of charitable deductions, which is 77% of his AGI - well in excess of the 50% limitation that would have applied absent the Katrina legislation. The press release indicates that the charitable contribution reflects the amount of net proceeds from an independent administrator's exercise of the VP's Halliburton options - apparently, the VP had agreed back in 2001 that he would donate the net proceeds from the options to charities once they were exercised.

The press release seems to confirm, at least implicitly, the VP's efforts to take advantage of the Katrina legislation - it mentions that the Cheneys wrote a personal check of $2.3 million to the administrator in December in order to "maximize the charitable gifts in 2005." Admittedly, I don't know anything about the transactions beyond the info in the press release, but my gut reaction is that the personal check was given in order to make sure the independent administrator had sufficient liquid assets to pay all of the promised charitable contributions before the 50% limit returned on 1/1/06.

Since he would have had to give thel money away anyway, the special Katrina deal saved him oodles.