You do realize that a person can be a minority owner in a partnership, right? They even have publicly traded partnerships that you can buy an interest in. If you have $10 sitting around then you can buy an interest in this one, and then you too can have this same high class problem of waiting on a K-1 to do your taxes.
Since when has politics been dependent on reality? I didn’t say the Obama campaign would demonstrate that Romney had done something wrong (in fact, I said he hasn’t done anything wrong). I said the Obama campaign would be able to make it look like Romney was doing something wrong.
:smack: Are you serious?
And I said they won’t do that because Obama is much smarter than the people in this thread. He knows that if someone invests in a partnership or has other complicated business dealings, it takes time to get the proper forms, and the timing of getting those forms is completely out of Romney’s hands.
I think most people are too smart to believe Obama was born in Kenya. But Republican candidates continue to say this to their base. Are you saying the Republican base is dumber than the Democratic base?
Trying to justify Republican talking points?
I’ll bet they know the Earned Income Credit backwards and forwards though.
This just another example of Willard’s tone-deafness relating to regular tax payers. Sure, it is legal and millions of people do it every year, but they aren’t presidential candidates. You would think he would be sensitive to the issue of transparency, but he just doesn’t get it. It looks like he is trying to hide something, and it gives his adversaries just one more thing to add to the growing catalog of things to use when portraying Mitt as the out of touch rich guy…
Filing a tax extension is perfectly legal and is something every taxpayer could do if they chose. It doesn’t decrease your tax due and could even increase it due to interest owed (though I think we all know Romney’s not going to be paying much).
So as an issue of misconduct? No, no issue.
However, it should be a campaign issue. Romney campaigns on the fact that there’s nothing wrong with working Americans paying a higher tax rate than the investor-Americans, which happens to benefit him personally, even though he easily could pay a higher rate and still be more comfortable than 99.999% other Americans. He knows this is a weak point and he’s trying to hide further information from being released (or at the very least he’s not trying to be more transparent about it).
So the Democrats can and should hammer him night and day about what he’s hiding. If it makes him sound like he’s hiding something dirty? Too damned bad. There’s a remedy for that, it’s called transparency. And I want to see Romney’s long-form birth certificate, too.
Quite clearly if you are a Republican presidential candidate then you need to acquire the ability to travel through time in order collect your tax information from the future to allow you to file by the first deadline. Anything else shows how clearly out of touch you are with the ordinary person.
Did Obama file for an extension when he did his 2005 tax returns?
This website has all of his returns from 2000 through 2011. Every return is either signed by the Obamas, the tax preparer, or both except 2005. The 2005 return, however, does have a time stamp from a fax machine of 9/21/06.
2000 Return - Signed 4/15/01
2001 Return - Signed 4/13/02
2002 Return - Signed 3/24/03
2003 Return - Signed 4/13/04
2004 Return - Signed 3/2/05
2005 Return - Unsigned and Stamped 9/21/06
2006 Return - Signed 4/16/07
2007 Return - Signed 4/13/08
2008 Return - Signed 4/12/09
2009 Return - Signed 4/7/10
2010 Return - Signed 4/13/11
2011 Return - Signed 4/11/12
Again, I think there is nothing wrong with filing for an extension. I just think it would be funny in light of all of this fake outrage over Romney.
What specifically do you believe he is trying to hide? I mean what exactly do you think will be on his final 2011 tax return (that will be available to the public prior to the election) and his estimated 2011 tax return?
This line of thinking seems absolutely crazy to me. He’s put out what will very likely be nearly identical to the final return. The election is 11/6/12. The deadline for the return is 10/15/12. What could he possibly be hiding that would be damaging to be revealed now but won’t be damaging three weeks before the election?
Welcome to 24-hour cable news-driven politics, circa 2012. Between now and Noverber there will be ~30 pseudo-scandals. These are triggered by things like video of somebody saying something dumb, an outlandish bill under consideration in Podunk USA, or an exorbinantly wealthy presidential candidate filing his tax return. This will lead to a freak-out on CNN/Fox/MSNBC, where pundits will alternately call this the greatest outrage in the history of man or defend it against such scurrilous attack on all things American. There will likely be calls for further hollow action (requests for public apologies/denouncements, release of more documentation, congressional hearings), and the whole thing will die down once the next shark attack/celebrity arrest/natural disaster occurs.
Translation: Mitt’s return is gonna be part of this cycle no matter what. It’s in his interest to get this in the hopper sooner rather than later–maybe time it on a Friday when the next big summer blockbuster movie opens wide. If he’s lucky and it’s another “Hunger Games”, no one will notice.
I think he doesn’t want the voters to see that his 2011 return looks like his past returns.
Once again, Romney hasn’t done anything illegal.
But he doesn’t pay the same kind of taxes that most Americans pay. He makes his money via corporate investments and pays a significantly lower tax rate than most people pay. All perfectly legal. But if the public sees this, they might wonder if it should be legal. And they might wonder if a person who lives under these rules is sufficiently aware of the economic conditions most Americans live under.
But his 2011 estimated return was provided along with his final 2010 return back in January. Nearly every article discussing the tax return release referenced both 2010 and 2011 income and tax information. If he is trying to hide something, he is doing the absolutely worst possible job a person could do.
Now this statement is just ludicrously false. His effective tax rate is 15.2%. For 80% of U.S. taxpayers, the highest marginal rate is 15%. In case you are missing the point, it is literally impossible for these people to pay higher than 15% even if you did not allow any deductions (including the standard deduction).
According to this table at the Tax Policy Center, you don’t get above Romney’s 15.2% effective tax rate until you get to the top 95% of taxpayers. Here’s how it breaks down.
0-20%: -12.3%
20-40%: -4.2%
40-60%: 4.1%
60-80%: 8.2%
80-90%: 11.0%
90-95%: 13.8%
95-99%: 19.2%
99-100%: 24.0%
So, please tell me how you define “most Americans” or “most people”? I’d like to see how you come up with your claim that he pays a significantly lower tax rate than most people.
The critics conflate FICA with income taxes. Which is obviously dishonest, since the lower your income, the more you get back from Social Security when you retire, proportionally (since the payouts are regressive, and not directly proportional to the amount you put in). But then politics is a dishonest game.
But even if you do that, his effective tax rate is still higher than at least the bottom 80% of taxpayers.
And how do you know he isn’t going to do exactly that. Filing for a 6-month extension doesn’t mean you can’t file earlier than 6 months hence.
and the coverage in the press of this is? They trigger on the actual return.
I’m more concerned with the old returns myself. He is plenty smart enough (or the people managing his money are) to clean up the 2011 one. I want to see the ones which weren’t done under the light of so much publicity.
Clearly he’s going to move heaven and earth to avoid releasing his return a month before the election. However, Romney did request a similar 6-month extension in 2011 (for his 2010 taxes), and didn’t file until October 15th.
Romney’s in a no-win situation here. Even if he could file now, he’d blunt the momentum he just gained from effectively locking up the nomination last week with Santorum’s exit. But his response on this issue has been pretty weak–why, for example, doesn’t his campaign check if any high-ranking democrats have filed extensions this year, especially ones running for re-election? Obama campaign rightly spots a vulnerability.
Much ado about nothing. Everyone already knows Romney is uber-rich and pays minimal taxes (in relative terms). The Obama campaign just e-mailed me a link to a gadget that compares your net tax rate to Romney’s.
Even if it was a delaying tactic, so what? Politicians time the release of potentially unfavorable information to minimize its impact. Unless Romney is hiding massive illegal campaign contributions in his personal checking accounts, I don’t give a shit.