We all know that Bain Capital does whatever it can to avoid paying its taxes even when it means they didn’t pay taxes they should have under the law; that’s illegal.  They call it a “tax strategy” but it is really a decision to avoid paying taxes.  And Romney will not disclose his tax returns because he knows that if he does – it will be game over for him.  He simply hasn’t paid all of his taxes and if he didn’t – as many reports from the press and experts have concluded – then what he did was ILLEGAL.  As in – that would have meant he broke the law.  Not a patriotic thing to do.  But he won’t share his tax returns for that very reason.

The NY Times has the story HERE:

Among the firms to receive subpoenas are Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company, TPG Capital, Sun Capital Partners, Apollo Global Management, Silver Lake Partners and Bain Capital, which was founded by Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee for president. Representatives for the firms declined to comment on the inquiry.

Mr. Schneiderman’s investigation will intensify scrutiny of an industry already bruised by the campaign season, as President Obama and the Democrats have sought to depict Mr. Romney through his long career in private equity as a businessman who dismantled companies and laid off workers while amassing a personal fortune estimated at $250 million.

Some examples:

Like we said HERE when Romney was found claiming an “active role” with Bain on his 2010 tax returns in order to get lower rates:

This is just really ridiculous.  This should be disqualifying this man for president.  He claims on his tax returns for 2010 for tax purposes that he has an active role in Bain capital and due to his signing off on that – he gets tax treatment of 15% minus deductions instead of 35% marginal tax rates.  He did this by using a loophole called “carried interest” that allows fund managers the ability to pay 15% on their payoff instead of 35% even though they’re investing someone else’s money.  Romney will not say publicly that he will eliminate this loophole (source); thanks to this loophole … Romney could have very well made $100 million in lower taxes.

So – politically … he basically says “I’m an active partner with Bain Capital – I should only pay 15%”, but he basically tells voters “I am not an active partner with Bain.  I left Bain Capital in 1999 and I made all this money because I’m successful.  And the rich pay too much.”  I’m paraphrasing what he is basically saying here but it makes absolutely NO sense.

As we said HERE - Bain Capital funnels money through the Caymans time after time after time and Romney set these deals up when he was CEO.

As we’ve said HERE – it is clear that Romney did not pay all his taxes:

“Bottom line: Mitt Romney has not paid all the taxes required under law.”
~Victor Fleischer — Professor of Law at the University of Colorado

As we said HERE – according to the NY Times Romney’s Family trusts are using potentially illegal tax evasion techniques:

Bain private equity funds in which the Romney family’s trusts are invested appear to have used an aggressive tax approach, which some tax lawyers believe is not legal, to save Bain partners more than $200 million in income taxes and more than $20 million in Medicare taxes.

Details in the documents suggest that Bain funds in which Mr. Romney’s fortune is invested also used a variety of legal mechanisms to help some investors avoid significant taxes.

The documents also showed that some of the funds owned equity swaps, which have been used to avoid taxes that would otherwise be owed on dividends paid by American companies to foreign-based investors, like funds based in the Caymans.

As we said HERE – CNN reports on the “Son of Boss” trust that Romney oversaw as a director of Marriott that they call “the largest tax avoidance scheme in history”.  That’s according to CNN.  People were put in jail for it but not Romney.

During that period, Marriott engaged in a series of complex and high-profile maneuvers, including “Son of Boss,” a notoriously abusive prepackaged tax shelter that investment banks and accounting firms marketed to corporations such as Marriott. In this respect, Marriott was in the vanguard of a then-emerging corporate tax shelter bubble that substantially undermined the entire corporate tax system.

Son of Boss and its related shelters represented perhaps the largest tax avoidance scheme in history, costing the U.S. many billions in lost corporate tax revenues. In response, the government initiated legal challenges that resulted in complete disallowance of the losses claimed by Marriott and other corporations.

In addition, the Son of Boss transaction was listed by the Internal Revenue Service as an abusive transaction, requiring specific disclosure and subject to heavy penalties. Statutory penalties were also made more stringent to deter future tax shelter activity. Finally, the government brought successful criminal prosecutions against a number of individuals involved in Son of Boss and related transactions not associated with Marriott, including principals at major law and accounting firms.

As we shared HERE – according to Bloomberg News – Bain Capital “ripped off” the Italian people by using tax avoidance schemes in Italy among other things:

Bain Capital, under Romney as chief executive officer, made about $1 billion in a leveraged buyout 12 years ago that remains controversial in Italy to this day. Bain was part of a group that bought a telephone-directory company from the Italian government and then sold it about two years later, at the peak of the technology bubble, for about 25 times what it paid.

Bain funneled profits through subsidiaries in Luxembourg, a common corporate strategy for avoiding income taxes in other European countries, according to documents reviewed by Bloomberg News. The buyer, Italy’s biggest telephone company, now has a total market value less than what it paid Bain and other investors for the directory business.

In Italy, the deals have spurred at least three books, separate legal and regulatory probes and newspaper columns alleging investors made a fortune at the expense of Italian taxpayers. Boston-based Bain wasn’t a subject of the inquiries, which didn’t result in any charges.

Romney himself probably earned more than $50 million, and possibly as much as $60 million from the Italian directory sale of Seat Pagine Gialle SpA, according to a person familiar with the matter. The deal turned into one of the biggest windfalls of his tenure.

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