“oh golly, gee, I had some very speculative high risk investments that weren’t worth very much because they were really long shots but they paid off and golly, I did very well”
It wasn’t a tax holiday. In fact you paid a 100% tax on any of your previously unreported foreign earnings but you didn’t go to jail (we would have seen thousands of wealthy people in jail, I’m not really sure why we allowed full amnesty, but this is America and we don’t sent rich people to jail if we can help it). It was the result of the conviction of a banker that was convicted helping people cheat on their taxes by hiding their money in switzerland. His career was over so he blew the whistle on a swiss bank and got 104 million dollars.
That must be a SEP, then. This is fine. (ETA: Well, not fine in I can’t see how that becomes the crazy amount Romney supposedly has total in his IRA; just that the $500K max makes sense.)I just don’t understand the mention of Roths in this thread.
OK, I think I get the Roth angle, now. So that would clear the small maximum set-up for a Roth ($5K-$6K), declaring those options as near-worthless, when in fact, they will have significant worth down the road. And this is common and works?
What do you mean he can lie as if there was some doubt? He does lie.
Richard Nixon lied too. I’m not expecting Mitt to come clean or anything - just that the opposition would make the absurdity of his claims so clear that his lying would be pitiful and inadequate.
And I’m a realist. If that happened I’d fully expect Fox News to be crowing about his ability to get such good returns means he is even more suited to be president.
As another poster noted. The IRS is underfunded, noone really likes them, they have no advocates in congress.
They lost a lot of enforcement in the late 1990’s during some congressional hearings, the IRS was painted as jackbooted thugs for taking the homes and cars of tax cheats.
When the Republicans weren’t able to eliminate the estate tax by calling it the death tax, George Bush fired half the estate tax examiners at the IRS. IIRC these guys found about $20,000 of unpaid taxes per hour but they were fired. As fucking hard as everyone thinks it is to fire a federal employee, the president was able to get it done fairly quickly. THIS is why government employees are harder to fire than private sector employees.
The taxpayer gets an opinon from a tax lawyer that acts as a get out of jail card if they ever get caught. The stock options have all sorts of meaningless restrictions on them that the taxpayer argues makes them impossible to value and if there is a value, the best value is zero.
Fine, and he could appeal to the principle that he would not unfairly disadvantage his son with an embarrassing name. But, you still haven’t answered my question of what higher principle withholding his tax returns is standing on here.
Why is it unreasonable when candidates have been doing it for many years, and he coughed up his to the McCain campaign in the last cycle when he was being vetted for the Veep slot?
It’s not unreasonable to do it voluntarily. It’s unreasonable to assume nefarious activity because someone chooses not to. Not having to prove your innocence is another good principle to stand on.
No one stuck a gun to his head and forced him to run for president. At this point releasing tax returns is expected - especially given that his father did it. It is like him saying that forcing him to give speeches or reveal the details of his economic policy was unreasonable. Well - he seems to think that last is unreasonable also.
I guess it’s important to stick to such a vital interest as “not giving into unreasonable demands” especially when it will probably cost you the Presidency. And we can assume that Governor Momjeans is not hiding anything illegal or damaging, then we must conclude he is the most moral, principled man on earth. Maybe that’s your conclusion.
Well, yes they just might, if his returns did not show that he took advantage of a tax amnesty for American taxpayers who illegally hid money overseas to avoid the IRS.
Or they might, if his returns showed that he did not actually undervalue contributions to his IRA, or undervalue contributions to a family trust.
In other words, if his returns did not show those things that those mean people suspects they do, then he pretty much shows the doubters to be nasty, false-accusing meanies. Then he can bask in the glow of righteousness and collect those middle, independent voters.
No, I honestly believe that Romney is hiding damaging information in his tax returns that would cause him to lose over 60% of the vote if he were to release them. By not releasing his tax returns I believe he can keep the President’s margin of victory just under 10%.