# Why won't Romney release his tax returns? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [August 1, 2012, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wont-romney-release-his-tax-returns/630085 "2012-08-01T18:35:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2012, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wont-romney-release-his-tax-returns/630085/61 "2012-08-02T23:15:54Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > Is it? He said somebody who invested with Bain told him Mitt Romney paid no taxes for 10 years. We don’t know who that person is or if there’s any reason to think this person has a clue what he’s talking about - or of course if the person exists in the first place. That’s not much of a basis for suggesting a guy cheated on his taxes for a decade, and it’s a bullshit way to try to get him to release the returns. It’s true that Republicans did this to Obama regarding his birth certificate and that issue was even stupider and much-longer lived, but still. Perhaps the person heard Romney bragging about it - Bain doesn’t have that many people, I think. Now anything south of $1,000,000 is nothing for Mitt, so I agree that it probably isn’t true, but Reid didn’t say it was true, he was just repeating what someone told him. Lying about Democrats is just about official Republican policy these days. If they don’t like some heat about them, they can kill my ass. And Mitt can put the entire issue to rest if he just releases the tax returns. And they had better be the long forms. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2012, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wont-romney-release-his-tax-returns/630085/62 "2012-08-02T23:17:56Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > Is it? He said somebody who invested with Bain told him Mitt Romney paid no taxes for 10 years. We don’t know who that person is or if there’s any reason to think this person has a clue what he’s talking about - or of course if the person exists in the first place. That’s not much of a basis for suggesting a guy cheated on his taxes for a decade Reid did not accuse Romney of cheating on his taxes or even imply that he had. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2012, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wont-romney-release-his-tax-returns/630085/63 "2012-08-02T23:25:58Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > It doesn’t work so well if you wind up looking like a bigger jerk than the sonofabitch. If Reid fell short of that, it’s only because the tax issue has been around for a while and Reid’s comments will be forgotten by the weekend. Ah, but Reid is not running the same risk-exposure, you see. **He’s** not facing an election until 2016. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2012, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wont-romney-release-his-tax-returns/630085/64 "2012-08-02T23:27:38Z")
> [@YogSosoth](#): > > You’re all wrong. The taxes will show that he has been secretly funding the Applied Sciences branch of Bain and is, in fact, Batman I dunno. After what we’ve seen of him this year, it is very hard to think of Romney as, you know, prepared. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2012, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wont-romney-release-his-tax-returns/630085/65 "2012-08-02T23:29:01Z")
> [@mack](#): > > Maybe he took advantage of one or more of the tax incentives in Obama’s stimulus plan and got stimulated. :eek: Oh, no! No stimulants for Mormons! ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2012, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wont-romney-release-his-tax-returns/630085/66 "2012-08-02T23:35:51Z")
> [@mozchron](#): > > I’d bet money that it isn’t true. But it’s a genius piece of muckraking anyway. Make the sonofabitch deny it and so forth. > > There is no situation where Romney can win this. If he doesn’t release the returns, these kind of speculations can keep hitting. After all as stated above, people are _just asking questions_. > > The only way to stop this is to release the returns. If there was ANY politically viable way to do that, he would have done it already. Ergo, there are some majorly damaging things in those documents. I doubt there is anything technically illegal (I don’t think Romney is too smart to avoid that, but I would hope he was just smart enough to hire people smarter than him). Its worse than that - its probably ALL legal, and that’s the problem. It makes him look even more like a rich fat cat gaming the system in a way that Joe Schmoe could never do. This. ---
**Author:** ![Fiddle\_Peghead](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fiddle_peghead/32/3506_2.png) [@Fiddle\_Peghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiddle_Peghead)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2012, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wont-romney-release-his-tax-returns/630085/67 "2012-08-02T23:54:23Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > There was an interesting [oped column](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/31/opinion/the-mysteries-of-mitt-romneys-financial-records.html) in the Times yesterday by a professor of tax law about this. While I have no idea what he may be hiding, it’s probably safe to say it won’t be very good for him politically. But I have to say, I think column is a joke. > [@](#): > > Some commentators have _suggested_, for example… > > Another _suggestion_ is that in 2009 he paid income taxes significantly below the 13.9 percent he paid in 2010… > > Moreover, _we have no clue_ whether Mr. Romney paid any gift tax on transfers… > > But _if_ the values of the gifts were not properly appraised and disclosed on Mr. Romney’s gift tax returns… > > …my bet is that — _if_ Mr. Romney filed a gift tax return for these transfers at all… (All emphases mine). I know it’s on the opinion page, it seems to me that anyone with a good knowledge of tax law could come up with all kinds of things they Romney _may_ be guilty of. ---
**Author:** ![An\_Arky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/87869e/32.png) [@An\_Arky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Arky)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2012, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wont-romney-release-his-tax-returns/630085/68 "2012-08-03T00:04:51Z")
Basically, Romney is a pig in a poke. He has no serious ideas for moving forward. In fact, I think the GOP would just as soon have Romney lose because Obama is a very effective stalking horse fund raiser for them. We sit here thinking “OMG, how could they be so retarded?”, but in fact being a poor speaker and having disdain for other countries is wingnut catnip. ---
**Author:** ![TonySinclair](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/49beb7/32.png) [@TonySinclair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TonySinclair)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2012, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wont-romney-release-his-tax-returns/630085/69 "2012-08-03T00:13:27Z")
Yesterday’s Rachel Maddow show, which I imagine is still available online, had a report about how he was caught lying about his tax returns when he ran for governor of MA. Some Dems were questioning his residency, and he claimed that he had filed as a MA resident for the required number of years, but when someone checked, it was found that he filed as a Utah resident during that time period. Asked to explain, he said that he didn’t read the returns before he signed them. This, even though they clearly state that the signature verifies the information as true under penalty of perjury. There was also something about a $50K tax deduction he took as a resident of Utah, which he somehow managed to get the Utah tax assessor to take the hit for. ---
**Author:** ![wedgehed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8edcca/32.png) [@wedgehed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wedgehed)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2012, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wont-romney-release-his-tax-returns/630085/70 "2012-08-03T01:12:50Z")
I’m confused about the speculation that he undervalued assets contributed to his IRAs. To my understanding, you can only contribute cash (that you earned) to an IRA & even that amount is limited. Is it more correct to speculate that he used the cash in his IRA to invest in something that he somehow was able to manipulate the price of? ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2012, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wont-romney-release-his-tax-returns/630085/71 "2012-08-03T01:40:35Z")
> [@Steve\_MB](#): > > Reid did not accuse Romney of cheating on his taxes or even imply that he had. He said (on one occasion) that Romney paid ‘basically’ no taxes for 12 years and (more recently) that he didn’t pay taxes for 10 years. We know Romney had income, so at least to me as a layman, it’s hard to imagine a circumstance in which that would be legal. In the real world, I think it’s very unlikely Romney paid no taxes, but I think it’s more likely he continued to pay rates in 13 - 14 percent range and lowered his payment through methods some people might find shady. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2012, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wont-romney-release-his-tax-returns/630085/72 "2012-08-03T02:02:05Z")
[Romney to Reid: “Put up or shut up.”](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/02/mitt-romney-harry-reid-taxes_n_1735197.html?utm_hp_ref=politics) (In those exact words, actually.) He challenges Reid to name his source. Of course, Romney could nail this lie much more easily by releasing his returns . . . couldn’t he? ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2012, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wont-romney-release-his-tax-returns/630085/73 "2012-08-03T02:26:03Z")
Brilliant move by Romney. People will definitely stop talking about his taxes now. ---
**Author:** ![IceQube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/dfb087/32.png) [@IceQube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IceQube)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2012, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wont-romney-release-his-tax-returns/630085/74 "2012-08-03T02:34:05Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > [Romney to Reid: “Put up or shut up.”](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/02/mitt-romney-harry-reid-taxes_n_1735197.html?utm_hp_ref=politics) (In those exact words, actually.) He challenges Reid to name his source. Of course, Romney could nail this lie much more easily by releasing his returns . . . couldn’t he? 1. “Kiss my ass” to “shut up” (by Romney himself). Time to call the mouth-washing police. 2. Romney has backed himself in a corner now. He just raised the stakes on his 2010 tax returns now. He better pray to Joseph Smith that none of his CPAs decide to leak his 2010 returns. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2012, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wont-romney-release-his-tax-returns/630085/75 "2012-08-03T02:53:08Z")
Reid’s doubling down again by repeating the allegation and saying he has an “extremely credible” source, whoever or whatever that is. So I’ll say that he probably didn’t make it up, and however good or bad the source may be, Reid seems to believe it. ---
**Author:** ![bengangmo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@bengangmo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bengangmo)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2012, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wont-romney-release-his-tax-returns/630085/76 "2012-08-03T03:00:04Z")
> [@TonySinclair](#): > > Yesterday’s Rachel Maddow show, which I imagine is still available online, had a report about how he was caught lying about his tax returns when he ran for governor of MA. > > Some Dems were questioning his residency, and he claimed that he had filed as a MA resident for the required number of years, but when someone checked, it was found that he filed as a Utah resident during that time period. Asked to explain, he said that he didn’t read the returns before he signed them. This, even though they clearly state that the signature verifies the information as true under penalty of perjury. > > There was also something about a $50K tax deduction he took as a resident of Utah, which he somehow managed to get the Utah tax assessor to take the hit for. Yeah - I watched the clip. Gotta wonder how he ever got away with the whole fiasco, and also how many people he threw under the bus. Given what happened then, it just (in my mind) adds a whole lot of impetus to the calls to release his returns. I also don’t think he did anything outright illegal, and would be fairly sure that he paid the taxes he was legally liable for - but there is a really good chance that the manipulations he used are shady and won’t be well thought of. ---
**Author:** ![bengangmo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@bengangmo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bengangmo)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2012, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wont-romney-release-his-tax-returns/630085/77 "2012-08-03T03:46:06Z")
OK - so Romney describes Obama’s economy as “sclerotic”. A bit of a scary, mediacally sounding word that I don’t understand - so I looked it up. It seems to relate to “hardening”. Can one of you fantastic dopers help me to interpret this in relation to Obama’s economy? Is it “hardening” and becoming less flexible? How does an economy do that? Or did Romney just choose a scary sounding word without caring about its meaning? ---
**Author:** ![TonySinclair](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/49beb7/32.png) [@TonySinclair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TonySinclair)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2012, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wont-romney-release-his-tax-returns/630085/78 "2012-08-03T03:47:51Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > He said (on one occasion) that Romney paid ‘basically’ no taxes for 12 years and (more recently) that he didn’t pay taxes for 10 years. We know Romney had income, so at least to me as a layman, it’s hard to imagine a circumstance in which that would be legal. There have been a lot of stories about corporations with billions in income paying little or no tax, so there must be ways to do it. I’m sure whatever he’s done is legal, since the rich and powerful write the tax laws, but it still might be smelly enough that even the Tea Party will not like it. ---
**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2012, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wont-romney-release-his-tax-returns/630085/79 "2012-08-03T03:55:08Z")
> [@Monocracy](#): > > How many years worth of taxes do Presidential candidates traditionally release? How many did Obama release in 2008, or Kerry in 2004, or Bush in 2000? Mitt’s father released 12 years to be transparent and above the board. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2012, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wont-romney-release-his-tax-returns/630085/80 "2012-08-03T04:08:34Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > [Romney to Reid: “Put up or shut up.”](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/02/mitt-romney-harry-reid-taxes_n_1735197.html?utm_hp_ref=politics) (In those exact words, actually.) He challenges Reid to name his source. Of course, Romney could nail this lie much more easily by releasing his returns . . . couldn’t he? You realize of course that Harry Reid has never released any tax returns while running for Senator. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wont-romney-release-his-tax-returns/630085.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-wont-romney-release-his-tax-returns/630085.md?page=5)