Answer – when it affects your taxes.
But according to his 2010 tax return, when the Internal Revenue Service comes calling in April, Romney has a different answer: The presumptive GOP nominee reaps lucrative tax breaks for “active” participation in the private equity firm he founded, as well as a host of other investments.
In the case of Romney this distinction is worth millions.
For tax purposes, he claims an active status; for political purposes, he claims to have zero to do with the investments.
The distinction is valuable, for the IRS treats passive and active income and losses differently. If a passive investment loses money, the taxpayer can only write off that loss if passive gains have also been made. But active losses can be written off at a 35 percent rate and deducted from the taxpayer’s ordinary income. In other words, a taxpayer wants active losses, not passive losses. So by describing many of his investments as active, Romney saves himself millions of dollars in taxes.
So lets be clear – either he (or his tax preparers) lied to the IRS for a hefty benefit he didn’t earn, or…
…he lied to the American People.
To their face.
Several times.
Oh yeah, he doesn’t want you to see what is in his other tax returns either. I wonder what we should conclude. I wonder what it would cost him in fines
Honestly, which is more believable for the “man of all positio…, er ‘seasons'”.
I hope (and assume) that the Obama campaign has reserved some of its campaign funding for doing research to uncover just this kind of thing.
It sounds to me as though there millions (as in many tens of millions) of reasons why Mitt Romney doesn’t want his tax returns available for scrutiny.
It occurs to me that perhaps it’s time to make the disclosure of something on the order of 5-10 years of tax returns a legal requirement each and every candidate for national office.
…that elected officials ought to be paid in accordance with the last private sector salary they earned plus a rated percentage: So if a pol runs for office and s/he’s currently making, say, $50,000 then the salary in that office will be $50K plus a small percentage. Each re-election will include a gradually decreasing percentage as a ‘raise’. Anybody making over, say, $200,000, would merely receive the top rate and no raises ever. This would require disclosure of at least 5 years of income and tax returns. Anyone refusing to disclose would get zero salary and be perpetually barred from ever getting a raise.
In a very real sense, politicians are judged on their ‘worth’ and this ought to include actual net worth and/or income history.
but one Senator makes $200K while the other makes $50K, just because of their prior jobs? Nah!!!!
… wouldn’t the ‘same education’ and ‘same experience’ mean, pretty much axiomatically, the same (roughly) salary? If you made a million dollars then your experience would be decidedly different from that of the fellow who made 50K. How does one have “the same education” and “the same experience” and end up with wildly differeing salaries….?
I don’t think you’ve thought this thru…
No, happens all the time. Companies will often pay people what they are making and not what they should be making. If a company is hiring person for a job and they make $50K, they may offer them $55K but if another candidate with identical exp/creds is wanted but they make $75K, they will be offered $80K… and this process happens/compounds all the time. You also have people who decide to make less because of various reasons such as benefits, work environment, commitments to cause/location…
I have not only thought it through but I have lived personally and have seen it many times in hiring people.
Tax returns are really nobody’s business, but the taxpayer’s and the IRS’s. I agree that a disclosure requirement might take the silliness we’ve seen off the table, but I still think there is a line between public and private records and declaring yourself for office should not mean your life is an open book. Salaries should be uniform for the same office without regard to previous earning history, and certainly decreasing over time makes no sense. These suggestions if anything counteract the notion that we want to attract the best people to public office.
So you agree that Mr. Romney should not have to disclose his tax returns?
I think you’re absolutely dead wrong. Executives in private and public companies are routinely required to disclose financial information to ensure that there is no potential conflict of interest. Nominees for cabinet posts have had similar requirements for similar reasons.
I believe that when I am about to cast my vote for the most powerful man or woman on the planet — a man or woman who literally has his or her finger on the button that can end all of humanity — I have every right to know who that man or woman is beholden to, how that person has acquired whatever wealth they have, and a host of similar questions.
When a person declares themselves for President (and, for that matter, congress or senate), that person’s life most certainly is an open book and rightly so.
all you do is get less people who want the job. How about their sexual history? Shouldn’t we know if a candidate is into S&M before he becomes out POTUS? I like things as they are.
to the feeling of many Dems that wealthy people are all bad and cannot be trusted. You see, if you can pidgin hole a candidate as “rich” and out of touch with the common man, then it’s a big advantage. Look how the Dems have done this with Romney (and they did it with McCain in 2008). So of course Tom and others want to know the candidates private business.
It’s a little pathetic how far we have come…
your REPEATEDLY IMPUTE to Democrats.
…though I am a bit curious about 1999-2002 due to the controversy over exactly what role he had at Bain. I’m fine with current disclosure laws, but I don’t care what deductions he took or charities he gave too, etc. I’d much rather have a debate about tax policy. I thought progressives believed in a zone of personal privacy.
He tried to give Kennedy grief for not disclosing in 1994.
The attack doesn’t have substance, but as long as it resonates it keeps him at least somewhat off message.
… or releasing them would be a non-issue.
How about we ask for his medical records from the last 20 years? If he says no, can we start to conclude he’s hiding a bad thing about his health. Or maybe, he just thinks it’s none of your business. We have a law and he has complied.
This issue is dead.
If there is nothing there, doing what has been done over and over and over again in the past would be an unremarkable event. Instead he’s letting the questions linger.
I don’t think he’s dumb enough to create this problem for himself ‘just because’. I don’t think you think he’s that dumb either.
I have said here already that he probably (not “must” since that word has an air of fact behind it like as swipe Harry Reid spoke) has something in his taxes that lefties would target using hyperbole. Even though Mitt said the SMALL fraction of his money that was in a Swiss account did not decrease his tax payment.
I will support Obama and any other candidate who decides to keep information private but if you want to believe people like Eric Holder are hiding something when they won’t release data then that’s fine, even if it is so cynical.
Then by 2002 he (shocker!) flipped and declined to disclose. The really galling thing about 2002 was that Shannon O’Brien DID disclose, though Romney, while simultaneously declining to disclose his own attacked O’Brien because her HUSBAND had not disclosed, at least to his satisfaction. So the Romney 2002 position was, “I don’t need to disclose, but my opponent’s spouse should!”