Why won't Romney release more tax returns?

[AdamSmith]

Excellent piece by two tax specialists on why there almost have to be skeletons in Mitt's tax closet:

http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/18/opinion/kleinbard-canellos-romney-tax/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

[Lucky]

The very fact that he won't release them tells me that. What was he going to do 4 years ago when the same returns that he won't release now should have been released?

[Guest EXPAT]

I suspect that he participated in the return your money sanctuary program in 2004/2005 where you could return your money from suspicious off shore holdings without any repercussions and put a lot of it in an IRA. I don't see how an IRA could possibly be valued above $100 million which his is currently. That isn't possible under the current rules given the number of years you would have to work to achieve such a balance. So something is up with that alone. Plus given the ability to have a much lower tax rate with investments and dividend revenue he probably had a net tax rate under 15% every year. And I think it will also show payment of CEO compensation from 1999 - 2002 when he said he was "retro-actively" retired from Bain. I think it will completely throw him to the curb if he releases it for all of the reasons above and he has no upside and only downside if he releases them.

[Guest DarnTop82]

As the Obama campaign and the media continue to press Mitt Romney to release more of his tax returns, and to suggest–without a shred of evidence–that he is a “felon,” it is worth noting how much critical information Barack Obama has withheld from view–both as a candidate in 2008, and during his term in office. Here is a Breitbart News top ten list of things that Obama has refused to release (a complete list would fill volumes):

10. State senate papers. In the 2008 primary, Obama criticized Hillary Clinton for not releasing papers from her eight years time as First Lady–but failed to produce any papers from his eight years in Springfield. “They could have been thrown out,” he said.

9. Academic transcripts. His supposed academic brilliance was a major selling point, but Obama (by his own admission) was a mediocre student. His GPA at Occidental was a B-plus at best, and his entering class at Columbia was weak. Can he prove his merit?

8. Book proposal. Obama’s literary agent claimed he was “born in Kenya”–for sixteen years. His original book proposal exists–biographer David Maraniss refers to it–and seems to have embellished other key details of his life. Yet it has never been released.

7. Medical records. In 2000, and again (briefly) in 2008, GOP presidential candidate Sen. John McCain released thousands of pages of his medical records. Obama, who had abused drugs and continued smoking, merely provided a one-page doctor’s note.

6. Small-dollar donors. In 2008, the McCain campaign released the names of donors who had contributed less than $200, though it was not required to do so. But the Obama campaign refused, amidst accusations it had accepted illegal foreign contributions.

5. The Khalidi tape. In 2003, Obama attended a party for his good friend, the radical Palestinian academic Rashid Khalidi. The event featured incendiary anti-Israel rhetoric. The LA Times broke the story, but has refused to release the tape–and so has Obama.

4. The real White House guest list. Touting its transparency, the Obama White House released its guest logs–but kept many visits secret, and moved meetings with lobbyists off-site. It also refused to confirm the identities of visitors like Bertha Lewis of ACORN.

3. Countless FOIA requests. The Obama administration has been described as “the worst” ever in complying with Freedom of Information Act requests for documents. It has also punished whistleblowers like David Walpin, who exposed cronyism in Americorps.

2. Health reform negotiations. Candidate Obama promised that health care reform negotiations would be televised on C-SPAN. Instead, there were back-room deals woth millions with lobbyists and legislators–the details of which are only beginning to emerge.

1. Fast and Furious documents. After months of stonewalling Congress, Attorney General Eric Holder asked President Obama to use executive privilege to conceal thousands of documents related to the deadly scandal–and Obama did just that.

In addition to the above, Obama and his campaign have lied about many facts about his past–his membership in the New Party; his extensive connections with ACORN; and his continued relationship with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright, among other examples. Obama’s own memoir is filled with fabrications. And now he is lying about his opponent’s honorable record in business. He–and the media–have no shame.

[MsGuy]

Move along, folks...nothing to see here.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/romney-ive-paid-at-least-13-percent-in-taxes-for-past-10-years/2012/08/16/gJQAv0NB0X_story.html

[Guest zipperzone]

DamTop82:

None of the "omissions" you claim BO did not release are in the same league as a Presidential candidate trying to cover up what could be criminal tax evasion. R & R's campaign slogan should be "Sleaze with Ease".

[Guest DarnTop82]

DamTop82:

None of the "omissions" you claim BO did not release are in the same league as a Presidential candidate trying to cover up what could be criminal tax evasion. R & R's campaign slogan should be "Sleaze with Ease".

So, the deaths of Federal Agents don't compare to an alleged lack of taxes paid?

Obama's whole history before 2008 is murky and unknown at best.

[AdamSmith]

DamTop82:

None of the "omissions" you claim BO did not release are in the same league as a Presidential candidate trying to cover up what could be criminal tax evasion. R & R's campaign slogan should be "Sleaze with Ease".

Why bother feeding this politico-troll? Rational and evidentiary argument will just go down the disposal.

[Guest DarnTop82]

Why bother feeding this politico-troll? Rational and evidentiary argument will just go down the disposal.

So, I get it. When someone posts an opinion against your, that person is a troll.

So, you can go on this board, and make multiple threads insulting someone, but if someone rebuts them, you just say he is a troll.

You know, for all your elitism and know it all, you fail to see that if Romney had committed something like "Criminal Tax Evasion" the IRS would have caught him by now. You think? You really think the IRS would have let someone like him slide?

Please, use logic. I beg you.

Meanwhile, American lives have been lost because of Obama, Holder and his "Injustice" Department knowingly let assault rifles cross into Mexican drug gangs.

What say you?

[Guest DarnTop82]

Obama averaged $1.3 million the last two years according to his tax returns. Anyone here average $1.3 mil a year with obumblers economy? Does Barry really 'relate' to u? Does he really 'understand' the middle class and what we're experiencing?

Mochelle wore an $8000 coat to the Olympics. Any middle class Americans have an $8000 coat? That's eight thousand. Not $800 or $80.

[AdamSmith]

She should, had she any conscience, have worn a "good Republican cloth coat."

[AdamSmith]

You know, for all your elitism and know it all, you fail to see that if Romney had committed something like "Criminal Tax Evasion" the IRS would have caught him by now. You think? You really think the IRS would have let someone like him slide?

What say I is, among other things (but not to belabor it, I will elide the rest), that they have let me get away with plenty over the years.

I live in dread of an audit.

And I am the kind of medium-small fry they go for. You know the audit profiles.

[Guest DarnTop82]

Adam, you managed to reply, but say nothing at all. You would make an excellent politician.

You have refused to answer anything I have said. Which, for people such as yourself is on par I guess. Sigh.

[AdamSmith]

Thought what I said was a fairly direct, substantive and honest (hoping to Christ the IRS is not snooping here & taking down IP addresses) response.

Sorry you do not wish to engage in intellectually honest & authentic interchanges, whatever our ideological differences. I tried.

[Guest zipperzone]

Thought what I said was a fairly direct, substantive and honest (hoping to Christ the IRS is not snooping here & taking down IP addresses) response.

I wouldn't push my luck if I were you. I doubt if the IRS are snooping. What you don't know however, is who else is visiting this site and may just be evil enough to pass your comments on to the tax boys. The risk may not be huge but why take chances?

[MsGuy]

I What you don't know however, is who else is visiting this site and may just be evil enough to pass your comments on to the tax boys.

Just in case one of our less reputable posters is thinking of dropping a dime on our dear AdamSmith, please be advised that you yourself will be in for a full scale audit. From long experience, the IRS has determined that there is a high probability that anyone inclined to rat out his fellow taxpayer is engaging in a bit fudging himself. Takes one to know one, so to speak.

[AdamSmith]

From long experience, the IRS has determined that there is a high probability that anyone inclined to rat out his fellow taxpayer is engaging in a bit fudging himself. Takes one to know one, so to speak.

First, I trust TY and OZ with my life & soul (assuming such latter in fact exists). So revelation of said IP address I discount. Second, ... Well, given MsGuy's sage counsel, what second is there?

[JKane]

So, the deaths of Federal Agents don't compare to an alleged lack of taxes paid?

Obama's whole history before 2008 is murky and unknown at best.

HEY EVERYBODY, let's take a couple minutes and read up on what "Fast and Furious" was *actually* about... DarnTop is right that it's really unsettling--turns out that's *all* he's right about:

Quite simply, there's a fundamental misconception at the heart of the Fast and Furious scandal. Nobody disputes that suspected straw purchasers under surveillance by the ATF repeatedly bought guns that eventually fell into criminal hands. Issa and others charge that the ATF intentionally allowed guns to walk as an operational tactic. But five law-enforcement agents directly involved in Fast and Furious tell Fortune that the ATF had no such tactic. They insist they never purposefully allowed guns to be illegally trafficked. Just the opposite: They say they seized weapons whenever they could but were hamstrung by prosecutors and weak laws, which stymied them at every turn.

Indeed, a six-month Fortune investigation reveals that the public case alleging that Voth and his colleagues walked guns is replete with distortions, errors, partial truths, and even some outright lies. Fortune reviewed more than 2,000 pages of confidential ATF documents and interviewed 39 people, including seven law-enforcement agents with direct knowledge of the case. Several, including Voth, are speaking out for the first time.

How Fast and Furious reached the headlines is a strange and unsettling saga, one that reveals a lot about politics and media today.

[AdamSmith]

JK (pls take this in the lightness of being. Not to say loafers )...

Yr reply of the latest inst. above:

(1) takes us off-topic here (as my group shrink said, correctly, of some hobbyhorse of mine that I got off on the other day) &, more to the point,

(2) FTTs!*

* Feeds The Tr... (expletive deleted! Foreshortened, rather.)

But your substance is gravely accurate. Would you re-post verbatim in a new thread? This pathological nonsense that you rightly denounce bears repeated rebuttal and correction.

We are where the sainted Gertrude Stein called it, so presciently, way back in 1945: "We get so much information all day long that we've lost our common sense."

And our wretched so-called press has done likewise. The friction from Th. Jefferson spinning in his casket in disgust must be burning up the grounds of Monticello these days.

[JKane]

I've decided I can't let reference to "Fast and Furious" go unanswered, but I too think this deserves more notice...

Since it's as much a story about news coverage as anything else, as requested, I've created a new thread in the main forum.

[AdamSmith]

Thank you!

Ok, master narratives of societal decline can get old quick.

Nonetheless, the civic ignorance that pervades today seems quite actual, and as such a real & present risk to the continuance of democratic civic governance.

The framers premised the whole shebang on an, on the whole, informed and discerning polis. Which, today, we just ain't got. Arresting to read Tocqueville noting way back when that in his travels into the remotest hinterlands of the young republic he found, in contrast to the peasant ignorance so often encountered in Europe, a local newspaper in most every rude cabin filled with cosmopolitan news of the national civic issues of the day. And the farmer citizens avidly engaged in debating same at the town store or saloon, with sharp apprehension of the meanings and implications thereof, both local and national.

Ach.

[Guest zipperzone]

Mit the Nit is now trying to claim that the reason he won't release more tax returns is to keep from revealing how much $$$ he gives to the Mormon Church.

God help you guys if he is successful in his Presidential bid.

[TampaYankee]

Romney is sensitive about having his tax avoidance strategies paraded before the electorate who do not have the where-with-all or experts to avoid taxes that he has. Nothing illegal, just expository of what the wealthy have gotten put into the tax laws that favor them over the middle class. I'm sure he figures that won't win him as many votes as he would lose.

[Guest FourAces]

Not sure if this was mentioned or not but its very possible there is not much to release. According to reports I have heard on the local media he filed but did not owe any money to Uncle Sam. His campaign chief does not feel it would put him in the est light if the public saw he did not pay any taxes for several years. If true he must have had some mega write offs

[TampaYankee]

Gawker reports show that...

Mitt Romney Tax Returns May Have Employed Legally Dubious Maneuvers, Tax Experts Say http://www.huffingto..._n_1827632.html

It also says that it looks like Bain and consequently Romney may clearly have broken the law by having income illegally reported as capital gains.

Nope, this ain't goin away.

Romney has to win now. Else he may end up in Leavenworth.

The new Romney bumper sticker...

Romney made his money the old fashioned way...

He stole it.