“He didn’t pay taxes for 10 years! Now, do I know that that’s true? Well, I’m not certain.  But obviously he can’t release those tax returns. How would it look?  You guys have said his wealth is $250 million.  Not a chance in the world. It’s a lot more than that. I mean, you do pretty well if you don’t pay taxes for 10 years when you’re making millions and millions of dollars.”
~Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (R-NV) 

No way to prove that Harry Reid is telling the truth but in all likelihood … we know that Romney paid probably much less in taxes than he showed for his 2010 returns.  And now either Romney has to deny it or try to ignore it and hope it goes away (it isn’t going away).

HuffPo reports HERE:

Tellingly, neither Reid nor his office would reveal who the investor was, making it impossible to verify if the accusation is true. And as his quote makes clear, he’s uncertain if the information is accurate. The Romney campaign’s press secretary, Andrea Saul, has previously denied rumors that Romney didn’t pay “any taxes at all.”

But there is limited political downside to the type of open speculation that Reid is making, so long as Romney refuses to budge on the issue of his tax returns. Increasingly, other Democrats are growing more assertive in their goading. In an appearance at the Center for American Progress on Tuesday, former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland argued that he could openly speculate as to whether Romney “is a tax avoider” or “cheat” because “his behavior invites such speculation.”

And as we wrote about HERE – Romney says he can’t remember whether or not he has paid less than the 13.9% in income taxes that we know he paid from the one incomplete tax return that he has released.  When asked – his response was “I haven’t calculated that. I’m happy to go back and look …”.  He is however not happy to go back and look.  His campaign has said that they will not be sharing those tax returns.   And that’s because he has more to lose by showing them than he does if anyone sees them.  His tax returns will likely make him unelectable.

We know that he has been avoiding this for a long time (source).

We know a majority of Americans want to see his tax returns (source).

We know he has as much as $100 million in an IRA in overseas tax havens (source).

And the NY Times writes about Romney’s $100 million IRA HERE:

Mr. Romney’s Cayman Islands and Bermuda corporations also probably allowed him to avoid limitations on deductions for investment expenditures that would otherwise apply. So we don’t need any more tax returns to know that Mr. Romney is an Olympic-level athlete at the tax avoidance game. Rich people don’t send their money to Bermuda or the Cayman Islands for the weather.

Moreover, we have no clue whether Mr. Romney paid any gift tax on transfers, now valued at $100 million, to a trust he set up in 1995 for the benefit of his five sons. Until this year, the federal gift tax had a lifetime exemption of $1 million, and it taxed gifts in excess of that amount at rates between 29 and 44 percent. A gift of $100 million to one’s children could, therefore, require paying a tax of as much as $29 million to $44 million.

We know conservatives are calling for Romney to release his tax returns (source).

We know that Romney has acknowledged that releasing his tax returns could be politically damaging (source).

Comments

comments