Oh please let this person be the nominee:
Romney Parks Millions in Cayman Islands – ABC News.
Incredibly, even after this, Mitt’s probably the most “electable” of the remaining Repubs. (And yes, let’s use scare quotes around “electable”, because we’re not actually talking about someone who could be elected in an actual election.)
Now, this could mean two things for the Republican Cognitive Dissonance Movement and its relationship towards its prohibitively-likely nominee:
1. Republicans could admit there’s a bit of a problem between Mitt’s effective tax rate and evasion sheltering. And they might criticize him for it. They might even vote for Obama er, stay home.
2. They could declare that in fact, offshore bank accounts are a necessary prerogative of our betters excuse me, our Galtian overlords, sorry, the job creators; and that the mere suggestion that there might be something not quite right about stashing such wealth away from the prying eyes of the IRS — an option not available to us proles — is tantamount to Bolshevism.
I am clearly expecting #2.
tedf says
“Tax havens are people too, my friend.”
bluewatch says
Well, who else are tax havens? They are people!
David says
What’s especially ironic about this whole Romney tax thing, of course, is that for the last several years, he’s gotten the benefit of a 15% tax rate and rules favoring offshore tax havens, while he’s created exactly (wait for it…) zero jobs.
So … what’s the rationale for these rules, again?
farnkoff says
Is this stuff really legal or what? Will the IRS be investigating Romney?
tedf says
Just to be clear, parking money in the Cayman Islands doesn’t relieve Romney of the obligation to pay taxes on his income worldwide, and I am sure Romney has paid all taxes owed. But, well, it’s hardly patriotic, is it?
SomervilleTom says
Mr. Romney pays the same tax rate on money parked in the Cayman Islands that he would pay in the US. That isn’t why it’s there.
Foreign investors pay significantly lower taxes on their returns in the Cayman’s than they do if they invested in a US fund. That, in turn, means that the fund charges significantly higher fees than a US fund.
Mr. Romney is paid a percentage of the fees, that’s how he makes his money. His income is higher than it would be in the US, and the increase came directly out of of the pockets of US taxpayers.
It’s a variant of a similar game played by retail owners near the NH border. Careful shoppers will notice that prices in those “tax free” NH outlets are higher than the prices of the same item in MA — higher by an amount often exactly the same as the MA sales tax. The consumer pays about the same. Retail owners benefit from the tax difference, not the consumer.
It is accurate to say that Mr. Romney pays the same taxes on his offshore wealth that he would have paid in the US. It is false and misleading to imply that the public gets the same tax revenue.
Charley on the MTA says
He’s not evading taxes himself, but he’s enabling others to do so and essentially getting a cut of the action.
SomervilleTom says
.
demeter11 says
Romney has said that “Governments don’t create jobs!”
So why is he running for president as “job creator?” And if governments don’t create jobs what does he think he can do as president to create jobs? Let me think…..
Hey, maybe he’ll cut taxes on the “job creators” so they can do some creating. Oh wait, that didn’t really work after job creators got windfalls from the Bush tax cuts.
Maybe he wants to be president so that afterward he can make more than $375,000 in speaking fees, which, as he says, is “not very much.”
Hey, we get that. He must have high travel expenses to manage his millions in that Cayman Islands post office box.
Agreed, let this man be the nominee. (M)It’ll be so much fun.
karenc says
superpacs have likely created many jobs – someone had to make all those attack ads and do the investigations behind them.
Gingrich and Romney are both having tons of money spent backing them – or smearing the other. If this keeps going, Citizens United may be actually stimulating the economy! If it did, it would be sweet that they helped the economy, which helps Obama. (I suspect the amounts are too low, but every little bit helps.
As to your point – he didn’t create jobs in most of the years he got that break.