I don’t know how much this has been covered in other threads, but I keep seeing news stories about how Romney only released tax returns from the past two years, and how people keep urging him to release more, including many Republicans urging him.
The latest story is that Harry Reid said that a Bain investor told him that Romney hasn’t paid any taxes in 10 years (story here). This seems incredible and somewhat unlikely to me, but it can’t be definitely refuted since Romney hasn’t released his tax returns.
It doesn’t help that most other politicians release a lot more. I believe Pawlenty released more when he was running last year, so if Romney picked him for VP, that would definitely be brought up a lot about how we would know more about the VP than the actual candidate.
I’m a little fascinated by this story. Because no matter how bad the thing is that he’s trying to hide by not releasing the returns, I would think it can’t be any worse than the rampant speculation that’s going on about it. So, does anyone who knows more about presidential politics and/or tax stuff have any reasonable guesses on why he hasn’t released more returns or what he could try to be hiding?
It seems pretty obvious to me. He got hammered for only paying something like a 14% effective tax rate. I think it’s highly likely that at least in a few of those years his effective rate was significantly lower than that.
When you add in that his tax plan would cut that even lower it’s very bad political optics.
He paid 13% in a year that he absolutely KNEW he would have to release the data when he was planning on running for president. Imagine how little he paid in years that he doesn’t think will see the light of day.
I think there is also a strong possibility that he had to take advantage of recent amnesty programs for illegal offshore accounts, and those programs would have tell tale signs in earlier tax returns.
Even if everything was technically legal (such as somehow declaring his dressage horse as a business expense), it seems like it would be hard to convince the average American that this is the person that we’d want in charge. If it does somehow come out that he paid single digit percentages, or less, is that game over for him or will it somehow be forgiven?
There was an interesting oped column in the Times yesterday by a professor of tax law about this. Mitt gave a gift of a whole bunch of money to his kids. It seems that at the time he did it, the common advice given to the rich was to undervalue the assets given as the gift to avoid gift taxes, since the IRS never checked. If he did this, he would owe tens of millions of bucks in taxes, interest and penalties.
This sounds plausible, since the only way he could have an IRA worth between $20 million and $100 million, which can only happen if he undervalued the assets he put into it.
I used to think that he couldn’t have done anything that underhanded, or he would have gotten caught. Now I’m not so sure.
There are two things that I find intriguing or convincing in this debate. Romney has chosen to release only two years’ worth of returns. Assuming he truly wants to win, he must believe that the damage from not releasing more returns will be less than the damage from releasing them. Also, I’ve read reports that he gave 23 years’ worth of returns to the McCain campaign in 2008 when he was being vetted as a potential running mate. I find it troubling that he considered it a valid interest then, but won’t release the same information now. The public is supposed to be vetting him for the presidency.
I think the most likely theory is that he paid a very low tax rate (like low single digits) for several years. As one of his few concrete campaign proposals is to lower taxes paid by the rich, this would obviously be damaging.
The less likely but more fun theory is that he took place in a recent IRS amnesty offer to repatriate money held in Switzarland, after the US got the Swiss to agree to various reporting rules. This explanation has the advantage that it would’ve appeared in his 2009 tax returns. Otherwise its strange that he didn’t at least release his returns back to his first Presidential run.
Also: when are we supposed to see last years return? He apparently got an extension on it and said he he’d release it when he filed. Which is fair enough, but its August now. I guess legally he could wait till Oct 15th, but it would be pretty nuts of him to release them that close to the election.
Why give Obama more ammunition? I doubt there are many people out there who are undecided, and only waiting to see more tax returns before they make up their minds.
That’s the long and the short of it. I’m not sure what the specific reason is, but obviously he feels it’s worth taking some flack over because the response to the fine points of his tax returns would be worse. Certainly nobody has applauded his tax disclosures so far.
It’s consistent with his campaign’s strategy of not acknowledging that there is any other issue than the incumbent’s performance in office.
If the tax return issue actually becomes a big deal to the general public, then I think he’ll flip flop on it pretty readily just to get the conversation back where he wants it. But so far, while the public wants him to release his tax returns, there’s no evidence that his unwillingness to do so is hurting his campaign. Most people probably just assume that the returns will show that he’s a rich guy who pays a relatively low tax rate and have already baked that into the cake of their perceptions of the guy.
It’s going to be in a lot of campaign ads in September and October, and it’s unlikely to help if he releases them at that point.
That sounds like an argument he should release the returns. If everybody already has a general idea what’s in them and the public doesn’t care, why allow the Obama campaign to keep hitting him with ‘Mitt Romney keeps his money overseas and won’t release his tax returns’ ads? He obviously does think there is something in the returns that would look bad for him.
My WAG (besides the fact that he’s not legally obligated to release more than he has), is basically he doesn’t want to hand more ammunition to the Dems. Look at the mountain out of a mole hill they have made out of when, exactly, he left Bain, and you can see why he would be reluctant to give them more stuff to use against him. I’d guess that someone (probably Mitt himself) has made a rough calculation that he will take less of a hit over this (since, he is after all complying with the law, if not the de facto tradition) by stubbornly sticking to his guns than he would if he released more info and the Dems then picked through every line to find more stuff to shoot at him.
Plus, at this point, he’s kind of backed himself into a corner on this whole issue, so caving in would probably also be a negative. In the end, this is going to matter most with folks who are already not planning to vote for him, and matter least to those who were anyway…and, at most, is going to be neutral with those on the fence, since it’s pretty obviously just a strategy to shift the focus off of how bad things are with the economy and onto Mitt and his past history as a dirty capitalist pig dog. That runs.
Bingo. I doubt there are any problems with the returns, nothing beyond whatever “problems” people see in the current ones. But it would mean that Obama & Team would simply point to a hundred things, mischaracterize every one of them and DEMAND ANSWERS! And if he doesn’t expend the time and effort to explain away every single one, we have…AHA!
“Legally obligated” is bullshit. He’s not legally obligated to release ANY tax returns, so that’s a strawman argument. We’re discussing releasing a reasonable number of returns, to satisfy the public’s easily satisfied curiosity, and he won’t do that.
It’s a valid request to make BECAUSE so much of his self-proclaimed qualifications concern his record as a businessman–can we see what degree of help from a very business-friendly government he’s happily taken advantage of to achieve his success? Seems like a tough argument to make–“See how I’ve been oppressed by a greedy federal governement all these years?”–if he hasn’t paid squat in federal taxes. Much easier if he’s paid through the nose–or at least at a rate comparable to you and me.
Thanks for the replies everyone. This is interesting.
But it’s not like it’s taking away Obama’s ammunition by not releasing them. I think Obama’s put out commercials pointing out how few he’s released and asking what he has to hide, with the implication that it’s something terrible. If it is truly terrible then it probably is smart to not release any more. But if it’s merely bad, then it seems like would be better to release more returns.
And it’s not just Democrats wanting more to be released. Major Republicans have said that he should as well and get it over with. It seems like it would be better to do it now and get it over with, and there’s a chance people would forget it some by November. It’s just weird.
That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking. He wants to be elected based on being a great businessman and better at foreign policy than Obama. But he won’t talk about Bain much and won’t release his tax returns, and pretty much doesn’t talk about foreign policy.
I disagree that it’s a mountain/molehill issue. He’s the one who raised his departure date as his excuse why he’s not responsible for Bain’s actions after that date. Should his tax returns prove that he’s lying about this, I think that’s a huge hit to both his credibility and his credentials.
Actually, when I said that I thought there WAS a legal requirement to release tax info. I feverishly looked it up to show you the error of your ways…only to discover that you are quite correct. There isn’t one. Ha! Showed you!
Except that I’m pretty sure he HAS paid what he was legally required to pay in taxes. Basically, if you are expecting some sort of revelation (assuming he did release more than 2 years) that he paid less than he was supposed to, then I think you’d be sadly disappointed. I don’t think that even the Dems in their fondest wish think that he’s going to be caught doing something illegal. Why the Dems are pushing this is so they can use it as more ammo against him in the same way they are using Bain against him. The angst over this is because he’s not playing ball, so they are using that as ammo against him instead. So, damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t…which is pretty much what I said, and answers the OPs question.
It IS a mountain out of a mole hill issue. Basically, it’s a silly technicality…he left Bain as far as from a decision making standpoint, but remained basically a silent partner for a few years afterward for reasons having to do with how the business was structured. The only ones who think he’s ‘lying about this’ are ones who have drunk the kool-aide. The ones hinting that he’s ‘lying about this’ probably know better…and know great political ammunition when they see it. It’s masterful. The only thing that would be better is if they can pressure him into releasing more of his tax data. Not because of some great revelation that will prove he’s lying or did something illegal, but because he’ll be backing down, plus of all the pump priming about the evil rich and how little they pay in taxes, blah blah blah. It’s a total side issue, and a brilliant diversion that has captured the public’s rather limited attention and diverted a lot of folks from thinking about how the economy sort of sucks, and seems to be sucking more lately. Perfect bread and circuses issue.
Ha! Showed you!