Jacky Rosen Called the Trump Tax Cuts a Monstrous ‘Giveaway’ to the Rich. Then She Took Advantage of Them.

More than $7.3 million of Rosen’s net worth is housed in her family’s limited partnership

Sen. Jacky Rosen (D., Nev.) pulls no punches when speaking publicly about the 2017 Trump tax cuts, calling the package a “monstrosity” that is “just a giveaway” to the wealthy while urging Congress to focus its efforts on making the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes.

But behind the scenes, Rosen, who is running for reelection against Republican challenger Army veteran Sam Brown, appears to have structured her own vast financial holdings to take advantage of certain provisions in the Trump tax cuts to reduce her family’s tax liability. Rosen is worth up to $18.2 million, according to her latest financial disclosures, with upwards of $7.3 million housed in her family’s limited partnership, the Rosen Family Limited Partnership. Limited partnerships are a common vehicle utilized by wealthy Americans to give tax-free gifts to their children and shield their offspring from estate taxes.

But the Trump tax cuts appear to have rendered moot the need for the Rosen family limited partnership. The law doubled the estate tax exemption from $11 million in 2017 for a married couple to more than $22 million in 2018. Put simply, the estate tax provision enabled Rosen to transfer her entire net worth to her child tax-free without the use of any sophisticated tax strategies.

Rosen let the business registration for her family limited partnership lapse after the Trump tax cuts were passed into law. She and her husband failed to submit annual reports for the partnership in 2019 and 2020, Nevada business records show, leading the state to revoke its business license during those years.

But when it appeared the estate tax provision wouldn’t survive past the scheduled 2025 expiration of the Trump tax cuts, Rosen filed paperwork to reinstate her family’s limited partnership. President Joe Biden campaigned in 2020 to lower the estate tax exemption to $3.5 million. In July 2021, just months after Biden took office, Rosen and her husband filed a certificate of reinstatement for their family’s limited partnership, Nevada business records show. It has since remained in good standing with the state.

Rosen was one of just three Democrats to vote in support of legislation in 2018 that would have made several aspects of the Trump tax cuts, including the doubling of the estate tax exemption, permanent. The Protecting Family and Small Business Tax Cuts Act passed the House in September 2018 but languished in the Senate.

The Rosen campaign disputed that the Nevada Democrat cast that vote in 2018 for the purpose of locking in the Trump estate tax exemptions for perpetuity. The campaign noted that Rosen, prior to her vote in support of the 2018 bill, introduced an amendment to remove the expanded estate and gift tax exemption thresholds. The Rosen amendment was blocked by Republicans in Congress.

Still, Rosen voted in support of the legislation, saying in a statement at the time: “While I made efforts to address flaws in this legislation, it does follow through on making middle-class tax cuts permanent for Nevada’s hardworking families, which is something I’ve advocated for as part of reforming the tax code.”

The Rosen campaign would not say if she let her family’s limited partnership expire in 2019 and 2020 because the Trump tax cuts doubled the estate tax exemption.

In July 2024, Rosen wrote a letter to the leaders of the Senate finance committee urging them to return the estate tax exemption to the threshold they were at before the Trump tax cuts were passed into law.

Rosen’s use of her family limited partnership could put her at odds with some of her Democratic colleagues, such as Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.), who said in a 2017 Senate Finance Committee report that family partnerships are one among the primary culprits enabling high net worth Americans to avoid wealth transfer taxes, which Wyden said undermines “our tax base and our democracy.”

Rosen’s family partnership also puts her at odds with her public rhetoric throughout her entire political career. 

“I don’t think having loopholes that people can, can squiggle into not paying their taxes is a good thing,” Rosen said during a town hall during her first run for Congress in 2016. 

During a December 2017 speech on the House floor, Rosen said the Trump tax cut package was a “monstrosity of a bill” that was “just a giveaway” to wealthy Americans while increasing taxes on hardworking Nevadans.

Rosen has continued to make the case for increasing taxes on wealthy Americans during her campaign for a second term in the Senate. In 2023, she wrote an op-ed calling on Congress to focus its efforts on making the “ultra-wealthy” pay their “fair share” in taxes.

All the while, Rosen has struggled to pay her own taxes on time. She was late paying $1,074 in property taxes on her $1 million, six-bedroom home in Henderson, Nevada, in March 2018, the Free Beacon reported, and fell behind again, paying a $2,279 tax bill on the property in January 2020.