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Romney’s tax nightmare
Romney’s tax nightmare
The real question about Mitt isn't "What is he hiding?" It's "Why didn't he clean up his act years ago?"
By Andrew Leonard
<...>
The last charge is certainly the most politically pertinent. Romney endured a firestorm of criticism when his release of his 2010 return (which he had resisted) showed that he paid taxes at the 13.9 percent rate. One can understand why he wouldn’t want to experience a far worse blow-up if he’d paid nothing at all a year earlier. The consensus of tax experts appears to be that such a scenario is unlikely but possible. 2008 and 2009 were very bad years for rich people — the Great Recession hammered the stock market. It’s conceivable that Romney “harvested” big stock losses to offset his tax liability. Combined with a very aggressive offshore tax-sheltering strategy, it’s definitely technically possible that he could have gotten away with tax murder.
After all, we already know that Romney has parked money offshore in Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and Switzerland. (Anybody interested in this topic who hasn’t read Vanity Fair’s exposé of Romney’s finances needs to start there.) For decades Romney has been pursuing strategies designed to lower the amount of taxes he pays in the United States. And not only does he see nothing wrong with that — “I pay all the taxes that are legally required and not a dollar more” — but he is also campaigning on an explicit agenda of further lowering taxes for people in his own tax bracket. He doesn’t like taxes! We get it.
But it’s still all inexplicable and confusing. This is not the expected behavior of someone who wants to hold the highest office in the land. It’s bad enough that the son of a man who set the template for modern presidential candidates by releasing 12 years of his returns can’t be persuaded to release more than one year (plus an estimate for 2011). But one would tend to expect that a man who has been doing nothing but run for president since 2006 would take pains not to engage in tax-avoidance strategies guaranteed to make him look bad politically.
But one would be wrong. Because quite obviously, Romney screwed up. The only thing we can say for sure about his tax strategy is that he didn’t manage his affairs as a serious presidential candidate should have. So maybe the question we should be asking instead of, What is he hiding? is, Why didn’t he clean up his act years ago?
- more -
http://www.salon.com/2012/07/18/romneys_tax_nightmare/
The real question about Mitt isn't "What is he hiding?" It's "Why didn't he clean up his act years ago?"
By Andrew Leonard
<...>
The last charge is certainly the most politically pertinent. Romney endured a firestorm of criticism when his release of his 2010 return (which he had resisted) showed that he paid taxes at the 13.9 percent rate. One can understand why he wouldn’t want to experience a far worse blow-up if he’d paid nothing at all a year earlier. The consensus of tax experts appears to be that such a scenario is unlikely but possible. 2008 and 2009 were very bad years for rich people — the Great Recession hammered the stock market. It’s conceivable that Romney “harvested” big stock losses to offset his tax liability. Combined with a very aggressive offshore tax-sheltering strategy, it’s definitely technically possible that he could have gotten away with tax murder.
After all, we already know that Romney has parked money offshore in Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and Switzerland. (Anybody interested in this topic who hasn’t read Vanity Fair’s exposé of Romney’s finances needs to start there.) For decades Romney has been pursuing strategies designed to lower the amount of taxes he pays in the United States. And not only does he see nothing wrong with that — “I pay all the taxes that are legally required and not a dollar more” — but he is also campaigning on an explicit agenda of further lowering taxes for people in his own tax bracket. He doesn’t like taxes! We get it.
But it’s still all inexplicable and confusing. This is not the expected behavior of someone who wants to hold the highest office in the land. It’s bad enough that the son of a man who set the template for modern presidential candidates by releasing 12 years of his returns can’t be persuaded to release more than one year (plus an estimate for 2011). But one would tend to expect that a man who has been doing nothing but run for president since 2006 would take pains not to engage in tax-avoidance strategies guaranteed to make him look bad politically.
But one would be wrong. Because quite obviously, Romney screwed up. The only thing we can say for sure about his tax strategy is that he didn’t manage his affairs as a serious presidential candidate should have. So maybe the question we should be asking instead of, What is he hiding? is, Why didn’t he clean up his act years ago?
- more -
http://www.salon.com/2012/07/18/romneys_tax_nightmare/
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