Legislative committee to study trust funds
CASPER — The Wyoming Legislature’s Joint Revenue Committee plans to examine how the state could make money off of certain, possibly nefarious, trust funds.
Thanks to weak oversight and the state’s strong privacy laws, wealthy people from across the globe have started to funnel their money into a special form of trust fund here, the Washington Post reported late last year.
These secretive trust funds consist of a Wyoming-based trust with nested private companies. The Post referred to this as a “Cowboy Cocktail.”
“The Wyoming trust magic formula is well known in the area of people who want to evade revenues and remain anonymous,” said Sen. Cale Case, R-Lander, who co-chairs the revenue committee.
These types of trusts funds are of renewed importance because of the war between Russia and Ukraine. There is evidence that some of the trusts may contain huge sums of money belonging to Russian oligarchs.
Case said that the war was “not a part of the original motivation” behind reviewing the trusts as a topic during the interim.
The Wyoming Legislature’s Management Council decided Friday which topics legislative committees would take up during the interim, the time between now and next year’s general session. During that period, the committees hear from the public, stakeholders and other lawmakers on some of the most pressing issues in the state. From those debates, committees will sometimes draft bills.
Case gave no indication that the interim revenue committee will produce a bill that would tax or expose trust funds in Wyoming; he plans for his committee to “explore” and “learn” about the topic.
“It might not be this year or even the next five years,” he said.
There are still a number of questions surrounding the “Cowboy Cocktail.” Chief among them is the question about how many such trusts here contain ill-begotten gains, let alone money from out of the U.S.
“We got to be careful here,” Case said. “A lot of people have trusts. Ordinary people working fairly ordinary jobs can accumulate enough money to form a trust.”
It’s unclear how many of the trusts contain money from outside of the U.S. and how many are linked to Wyoming families.
“There’s several of us scratching our heads on this,” said Ashley Harpstreith, executive director of the Wyoming Taxpayers Association.
Equality State Policy Center Executive Director Jenn Lowe raised the trust fund issue to the revenue committee a few weeks ago. When it was pitched, she was on the same page as Case: She wants the topic to be explored, first and foremost. Lowe declined the Star-Tribune’s request for comment.
Wyoming’s culture may play an important role with the upcoming debate on the Cowboy Cocktail.
“Wyoming’s always had a strong sense of “Let’s not assume people are doing bad things. Lets give people anonymity,” Case said.
Wyoming residents also possess deep national pride, and the state has seen notable opposition to the war in Ukraine. At the same time, Wyoming has a long history of being anti-tax and has struggled to pass various taxes on the wealthy that could have generated revenue for the state.
This story was published on April 9.
