In April, Elizabeth Warren released four years of tax returns, and Scott Brown claimed to release 6.
Brown and his friends in the media have been harping on this ever since, claiming Warren is a “tax return hypocrite”. The mainstream media has generally rolled over and not called him out on this.
But here’s the problem: Brown didn’t actually release his returns. He just let the media view them. He’s too scared to let real voters see them. Talk about elitism.
From the article in the first link: “Brown’s campaign released only the summary details from the tax returns in electronic form but did invite the media to Boston to review the documents at campaign headquarters on Summer Street. Warren’s campaign made the documents available online in PDF form for the public to see, as did President Barack Obama and GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney….
Reporters were banned from copying the returns and forced to write or type the information into notebooks or computers. The Brown camp also would not allow enrolled agents or other tax-preparation professionals to review the returns at his headquarters. During the day, about 15 reporters from different news outlets examined the tax returns, which were clamped together, labeled with stickies by tax year and spread in small piles over a couple of tables. Reed offered reporters pizza, giving the room a smell of tomato sauce as reporters studied returns.”
But here’s the most interesting thing: According to the MassLive article, Brown’s joint return reported $510, 856 in income: $263,291 from his book advance and $243,781 from his wages and his wife’s, with $142,821 of that coming from the US Senate.
Funny thing about those numbers: his book advance for 2011 was $300,000, according to his personal financial disclosure (page 2).
The salary of a rank and file Senator has been $174,000 since 2009 (page 1).
It’s reasonable to expect there were some business expense deductions. I can buy serious business expenses for promoting the book. But more than $30,000 in “business expenses” for being a Senator? It’s possible, but highly unlikely. For comparison, here are Barack Obama’s and Joe Biden’s tax returns. Their reported income from the Senate was within well $10,000 of the salary, except Obama’s in 2008, because he resigned in November. I suspect Brown is inflating his business expenses, which explains why he doesn’t any accountants looking at them.
I could be wrong about that, and it’s easy enough for Brown to prove me wrong if I am.
Call Scott Brown’s campaign office at (857) 263-8346 or contact him online at http://www.scottbrown.com/contact-us/ and demand to see the tax returns.
No one would be able to adequately review several piles of tax returns in a short meet and greet session — especially if tax professionals were not allowed in the room. And who knows what might have been missing from the piles. Undoubtedly, Brown surrogates were crawling all over the scene to distract reviewers with Rethug talking points, keeping attention away from doing the ‘math’. The pizza was a nice touch. Make their hands sticky with tomato sauce so they would be less likely to touch the returns and soil this important man’s paperwork. Typical Rethug BS.
I can’t imagine calling Brown’s office will do any good though. Might be better to make a Youtube video of this nonsense and make it go viral.
The problem here are the newspapers that accepted these conditions. Of course the Herald would play ball, but the Globe certainly should not have.
Tax attorneys were not allow to view the returns. Seriously, WTF?