Loophole Lets Lobbyists Hide Clients' Identity It is a fact of life on Capitol Hill that new lobbying coalitions sprout almost every day to try to influence everything from electricity policy to bankruptcy law to health care legislation. But the rising popularity of such coalitions goes beyond simply a desire to influence policy. Thanks to a loophole in the federal lobbying law, some companies and individuals � especially those pursuing controversial or potentially embarrassing causes � are using coalitions to conceal their identities. "You can have unpopular causes such as a tobacco interest or one of these corporations that have renounced its American citizenship hide their interests through this device," said Representative Lloyd Doggett, Democrat of Texas. "You can have foreign interests, if they combine with others, hide their involvement through this device." The Congressional Research Service, a part of the Library of Congress, recently examined lobbyist registration forms, Congressional testimony and media databases and found 135 lobbying coalitions for which it could find only limited information or none at all. One such group, the Section 877 Coalition, has been largely dedicated to keeping Congress from tightening the section of the tax law applying to the estates of wealthy individuals who gave up their American citizenship. The coalition paid more than $760,000 to two firms in 2000 and 2001 to press its case, disclosure forms filed with Congress by the coalition's lobbyists show. But the reports give no clue about precisely who wanted to protect expatriates, and some of the group's lobbyists have hardly been forthcoming. "It is our policy not to comment on client matters, except to note that with respect to the registration of these entities, we are in full compliance with the letter and the spirit of the law," said Steven Silber, a spokesman for PricewaterhouseCoopers, which had been one of the lobbying firms for the Section 877 Coalition. This year, the accounting firm sold its federal tax lobbying operation. Only in recent days, after repeated inquiries from a reporter and a request from a former lobbyist who now is an official at the Treasury Department, did lobbyists say that the coalition was made up of trusts for members of the Arison family. In the 1990's, Congressional Democrats used Ted Arison, the founder of Carnival Cruise lines who saved millions in taxes by renouncing his United States citizenship and returning to Israel, as a case study of why the tax law should be rewritten. Mr. Arison was one of the richest men in the world when he died in 1999. A spokesman for the Carnival Corporation, whose chairman is Micky Arison, a son of Ted Arison's, referred questions about why the Arison family trusts had operated through the Section 877 Coalition to one of the lobbying firms, Alcalde & Fay. At the firm, Hector Alcalde said he had listed the client as the Section 877 Coalition for "simplicity's sake," because PricewaterhouseCoopers had already done so. "There's no hidden agenda," Mr. Alcalde said http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/05/politics/05LOBB.html