Today, a comprehensive new joint report published by Americans for Tax Fairness, the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, and Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund exposes the often destructive impacts of the private equity (PE) industry on consumers, workers, and communities. In addition to providing several first-person stories of the havoc wrought by private-equity investment, the report details how the tax code makes the industry even more profitable and wealthy PE owners even richer. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) recently introduced legislation that would close one of the industry’s most egregious tax loopholes.

“Private equity is the ultimate example of how the fruits of the American economy have become increasingly consolidated with the wealthy few as consumers and workers pay the price,” said David Kass, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness. “Perhaps more disturbing, it is our tax code that has encouraged the growth of this predatory industry, through egregious special breaks like the carried interest loophole. With Trump’s tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy and big corporations set to expire, Congress should seize this opportunity to close the profitable loopholes that enable private equity firms to exploit the American people.”

“Private equity firms have turned tax loopholes into a weapon—siphoning profits from businesses, workers, and communities while their executives amass obscene fortunes,” said Eileen O’Grady, PESP Director of Programs. “These firms and their billionaire leaders exploit gaps in the tax code to dodge their fair share, all while driving companies into bankruptcy, pushing rents higher, gutting healthcare, and fueling environmental destruction. It’s a model built on looting, and it’s working people who are left paying the price.”

“The private equity industry exploits tax breaks and loopholes to extract wealth from workers and communities,” Oscar Valdés Viera, research manager at Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund. “The industry’s playbook for stripping companies for profit is subsidized by a tax code that rewards their predatory tactics. This rigged system distorts the broader economy, incentivizes speculation over real investment, entrenches systemic inequality, and exacerbates the racial wealth divide—all while private equity billionaires pocket massive publicly-subsidized gains.”

Among the key points of the report:

• PE firms raise money from wealthy individuals and institutional investors—including pension funds, university endowments, and sovereign wealth funds—to acquire and manage companies.

• PE investors use several tactics to wring as much money out of acquired companies as possible: aggressive cost-cutting through mass layoffs, charging excessive fees for questionable services, and taking on additional debt to pay dividends to themselves—which often leads to further cost reductions.

• Special breaks in the tax code make private equity even more lucrative for the firms and their wealthy owners and incentivize the financial engineering and predatory extraction that undermines the viability of the companies they acquire.

• Just eight top executives at two of the biggest private equity firms–Blackstone and KKR–saved a collective $335 million in taxes over a recent five-year span thanks to the carried interest loophole.

• An expired business tax break on loan interest that private equity is trying to restore as part of the effort to permanently extend the expiring parts of the 2017 Trump-GOP tax law would save the industry a fortune and also result in burdening acquired companies with more destructive debt.

• Victims of private equity–including homeowners, employees, and environmental activists–share their stories of corporate exploitation, hardball tactics and busted dreams.