Willard Romney’s Financial Black Hole

[malaise]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/11/opinion/mitt-romneys-financial-black-hole.html?_r=2&hp
<snip>
Paying taxes forthrightly has long been a matter of civic pride for most American politicians, a demonstration of honesty and of a willingness to share in society’s burdens. Since the Watergate era, presidential candidates have released several years of tax returns, allowing voters to peer at their financial choices and discern their entanglements.

Mitt Romney has upended that tradition this year. He has released only one complete tax return, for 2010, along with an unfinished estimate of his 2011 taxes. What information he did release provides a fuzzy glimpse at a concerted effort to park much of his wealth in overseas tax shelters, suggesting a widespread pattern of tax avoidance unlike that of any previous candidate.

Mr. Romney has resisted all demands for more disclosure, leading to growing criticism from Democrats that he is trying to hide his fortune and his tax schemes from the public. Given the troubling suspicions about his finances, he needs to release many more returns and quickly open his books to full scrutiny.

The 2010 tax return showed that the blind trust held by his wife, Ann, included a $3 million Swiss bank account that had not been properly reported on previous financial disclosure statements. (The account was closed by the trust manager in 2010 who feared it might become embarrassing for the campaign. He was right.) It also showed that Mr. Romney had used a complex offshore tax shelter, known as a blocker corporation, to shield the investments in his I.R.A. from paying an obscure business tax.

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The pressure is rising!

[Botany]

1. So Mitt Romney set up a "blocker corporation" as a tax shelter for his money but ....

.... now he says he doesn't know where his money is?


"I understand and you understand, of course, that my investments have been held by a blind trust,
have been managed by a trustee. I don't manage them - don't even know where they are," Romney
said during an interview on Monday on Radio Iowa. "That trustee follows all U.S. laws, all the taxes
are paid as appropriate. All of them have been reported to the government. There's nothing hidden
there, there's nothing."


http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57469332-503544/mitt-romney-defends-his-finances/

[BumRushDaShow]

2. K&R

Time for the vulture media to turn their sites on this tax-evader. They want tabloid headlines to get eyeballs? There is material there. They should follow their long-held credos when it comes to their own greed and go for the eyeballs since their own rethugs really don't care for him anyway.

[Reynalda Loftus]

3. Spam deleted by Violet_Crumble (MIR Team)