Jeffrey Birnbaum and Lori Montgomery's front-page story in today's Washington Post, Wall Street's Lucrative Tax Break Is Under Fire is dense and lengthy (1500 words) reading. But if you're trying to get a grip on the carried interest tax loophole issue -- particularly its legal/regulatory historical underpinnings -- it's the best place to start. The crux of the article puts the case for closing the loophole in straightforward terms: [U]ntil now, nobody has been focusing on the fact that if you're contributing services to a partnership where the returns are capital gains, you've managed to convert ordinary income to capital gains. Advocates of change say there is ample reason to identify the Carry, or at least most of it, as a wage. It is, after all, not a return on invested money. It is the product of work done to help a venture succeed, in much the way that an assembly-line employee helps a company make cars or airplane parts, they say. Hats off to the Post for putting a fairly opaque issue on the front page, giving it so much print, and couching it in terms that everyone can understand.