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The rumor is that Mitt didn't pay any taxes in the years he refuses to release. The real question he's horribly afraid of: How do you make millions without paying taxes?
I don't think anyone claims anything illegal has happened. The Romneys can hire bullet-proof tax attorneys. But there's legal, and then there's ethical.
There is nothing unethical with following the tax code.
March 25, 2008
Barack Obama and his wife released their tax returns from 2000 to 2006 on his campaign Web site Tuesday, and the Illinois senator challenged Sen. Hillary Clinton to release hers.
April 16, 2008
Sen. Barack Obama released his 2007 tax returns this evening, hours before his debate with Sen. Hillary Clinton.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're just unknowingly repeating a lie you got from someone else, or some website. And I'll follow that up with some pertinent advice -- get some new sources of information.
In the political environment that exists today, the opposition research of the Obama campaign is looking for anything they can use to distract from the failure of the president to reignite our economy. And I’m simply not enthusiastic about giving them hundreds or thousands of more pages to pick through, distort, and lie about.
I don't think anyone claims anything illegal has happened. The Romneys can hire bullet-proof tax attorneys. But there's legal, and then there's ethical.
What might you consider unethical with regard to Romney's handling of HIS money?
As George Will and many others have noted, there must be something truly damaging in Romney’s pre-2010 tax returns for him to willingly endure the criticism and scrutiny that has accompanied his refusal to release them—a refusal he reiterated on Friday, even as the issue, and the matter of his departure date from Bain Capital, has engulfed the campaign. “The cost of not releasing the returns are clear,” Will said on ABC’s This Week on Sunday. “Therefore, he must have calculated that there are higher costs in releasing them.”
The author speculates that the "higher costs in releasing them" is that they may show that in 2009, Romney paid no income tax.
Quote:
When the stock market collapsed in 2008, the wealthiest investors fared worse than everyone else. The “ultra-rich”—those with fortunes of more than $30 million—fared worst of all, losing on average about 25 percent of their net worth. “There was really nowhere to hide as an investor in 2008,” Merrill Lynch’s president of global wealth management pointed out in 2009. “No region ended the year unscathed.”
As a member of the ultra-rich, Romney probably wasn’t spared major losses. And it’s possible he suffered a large enough capital loss that, carried forward and coupled with his various offshore tax havens, he wound up paying no U.S. federal taxes at all in 2009. If true, this would be politically deadly for him. Even assuming that his return was thoroughly clean and legal—a safe assumption, it seems to me—the fallout would dwarf the controversy that attended the news that Romney had paid a tax rate of just 14 percent in 2010 and that estimated he’d pay a similar rate in 2011.
As the article points out, Romney has released his 2010 return, and (most of?) his 2011 return. And he is reported to have given over 20 years worth of tax returns to the McCain campaign in 2008 when he was being vetted for the V.P. slot. Assuming there was nothing in those returns that made McCain chose a completely ridiculous running mate like Palin, that could leave 2009 as the only tax return of Romney's not to be seen by anyone other than the IRS.
In politics, appearances are important. And it would appear that, for whatever reason, Romney has calculated that releasing more tax returns would be giving more people more reason to vote for the other guy ... and the longer he goes without releasing them, the less it matters what is actually shown in those returns.
If there's such a thing as a person slowly shooting himself in the foot, we're seeing it happen right now with Romney.
I know some of you are against him releasing more tax returns. But it would be in his best interest to do so. It's the only way to get the focus back on the economy and off him. It's only going to get worse for him if he doesn't.
Republicans who are asking Romney to release tax returns:1. George Will. 2. Bill Kristol.3. Ron Paul. 4. Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley.5. Michael Steele.6. Rep. Walter Jones.7. Ana Navarro.8. Rep. Pete Sessions.9. Gov. Haley Barbour.10. Matthew Dowd.11. Rick Tyler. Republican strategist12. John Weaver.13.Brit Hume 14. David Frum.15. John Feehery
Romney should just send Obama a blank W-form and tell him to shove it up his sticky place.
I and alot of American people want to see what he is trying to hide , The more he trys to hide the more I want to see.
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