Guest post by Mohsen Manesh:

In my previous post, I suggested that we are unlikely to see Delaware ever step back from its statutory commitment to freedom of contract in the alternative entity context. And that is true even if Chief Justice Strine, Vice Chancellor Laster, and others might believe that unlimited freedom of contract has been bad public policy.

Why? To be cynical, it’s about money.

It is well known that Delaware, as a state, derives substantial profits, in the form of franchise taxes, as a result of its status as the legal haven for a majority of publicly traded corporations. In 2014 alone, Delaware collected approximately $626 million—that is almost 16% of the state’s total annual revenue—from corporate franchise taxes. (For scale, that’s almost $670 per natural person in Delaware.)

Less well documented, however, is that Delaware also now derives substantial—and growing—revenues as the legal home from hundreds of thousands of unincorporated alternative entities. My chart below tells the story. Over the last decade, while the percentage of the state’s annual revenue derived from corporate franchise taxes has been flat, an increasingly larger portion of the state’s annual revenue has been derived from the taxes paid by its domestic LLCs and LPs. Unsurprisingly, in Delaware, alternatives entities have been a real growth industry.

Given the state’s increasing dependence on revenues from domestic LLCs and LPs, it is highly unlikely that the state would undertake any reforms that risk eroding this emerging and increasingly important tax base. Evidence, as well as experience, suggests that businesses (and their lawyers) are drawn to Delaware, in part, because of its unlimited freedom of contract and the ability to tailor and eliminate all fiduciary duties. [1] Thus, if Delaware were to alter its alternative entity law to curtail that freedom and impose some form of mandatory, unwaivable fiduciary duties, it would lose some number of LLCs. Too many other jurisdictions “give the maximum effect to the … freedom of contract”. [2]

Importantly, however, this concern is much less acute when the reform is one that is limited only to publicly traded alternative entities. For one, as I noted in my earlier post, Delaware’s 150 or so publicly traded LPs and LLCs represent a tiny sliver of the hundreds of thousands of alternative entities domiciled in Delaware. Moreover, those few publicly traded firms contribute only a nominal portion to Delaware’s overall revenues collected from alternative entity taxes.

As I have shown in earlier work, unlike Delaware’s corporate franchise tax, which is scalable based on a formula that tends to charge most to large, publicly traded firms (up to $180,000 annually), Delaware’s annual tax charged to alternative entities is flat. All LLCs and LPs, no matter how large or small, whether publicly traded or closely held, pay the state only $300 annually for the privilege of being a Delaware entity. Thus, unlike the corporate context, where Delaware’s business is dependent on attracting large, publicly traded corporations, in the alternative entity context, Delaware’s business depends on volume alone. And publicly traded alternative entities represent a negligible part of the state’s overall volume—accounting for approximately $45,000 of the total $195 million that Delaware collected from its domestic alternative entities last year.

The upshot is that although Delaware might be quite sensitive economically to curtailing the freedom of contract for all alternative entities, lest it loses some if this thriving tax base, the state may be relatively indifferent to losing the approximately $45,000 annually that it gets from its few publicly traded LPs and LLCs. 

Whether this indifference can be transformed into a willingness to amend its law to impose mandatory fiduciary duties in publicly traded alternative entities depends on whether Strine, Laster, and others can make a convincing policy case for making this change. Or more cynically yet, it might depend on whether Delaware’s legislature fears that in the absence of state-level regulation, the federal government might step in to preempt Delaware law on behalf of public investors. [3]

-Mohsen Manesh

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[1] See Franklin Gevurtz, Why Delaware LLCs?, 91 Or. L. Rev. 57, 105 (2012).

[2] See, e.g., Ark. Code Ann. § 4-32-1304 (2001); Colo. Rev. Stat. § 7-80-108(4) (2009); Conn. Gen. Stat. Ann. § 34-242(a) (West 2005); Ga. Code. Ann. § 14-11-1107(b) (2003 & Supp. 2010); Kan. Stat. Ann. § 17-76,134(b) (2007); Ky. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 275.003 (West, Westlaw through 2010 legislation); La. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 12:1367(B) (2010); Miss. Code. Ann. § 79-29-1201(2) (2009); Mo. Rev. Stat. § 347.081(2) (2001 & Supp. 2010); Nev. Rev. Stat. § 86.286(4)(b) (2010); N.M.Stat. Ann. § 53-19-65(A) (LexisNexis 1978 & Supp. 2003); N.C. Gen. Stat. Ann. § 57C-10- 03(e) (2009); Okla. Stat. Ann. tit. 18, § 2058(D) (West 1999 &  Supp.  2010);  Utah Code Ann. § 48-2c-1901 (LexisNexis 2007); Va. Code Ann. § 13.1-1001.1(C) (2006); Wash. Rev. Code Ann. § 25.15.800(2) (West 2005); Wis. Stat. Ann. § 183.1302(1) (West 2002).

[3] Cf. Gerber v. Enterprise Prods. Holdings, LLC, 2012 WL 34442, *10 n.42 (Del. Ch. Jan. 6, 2012) (Noble, V.C.) (“This [case] raises the issue of just what protection Delaware law affords the public investors of limited partnerships that take full advantage of [the freedom of contracting.] If the protection provided by Delaware law is scant, then the LP units of these partnerships might trade at a discount or another governmental entity might step in and provide more protection to the public investors in these partnerships.”) (emphasis added).