Pat Garofalo on Jan 18, 2012 at 5:25 pm
Mitt Romney yesterday admitted for the first time that his tax rate is about 15 percent, lower than the rate paid by millions of middle class families. [...]
Although it is not apparent on his financial disclosure form, Mitt Romney has millions of dollars of his personal wealth in investment funds set up in the Cayman Islands, a notorious Caribbean tax haven…As one of the wealthiest candidates to run for president in recent times, Romney has used a variety of techniques to help minimize the taxes on his estimated $250 million fortune. In addition to paying the lower tax rate on his investment income, Romney has as much as $8 million invested in at least 12 funds listed on a Cayman Islands registry. Another investment, which Romney reports as being worth between $5 million and $25 million, shows up on securities records as having been domiciled in the Caymans.
[...] As we’ve noted, Romney has a lucrative retirement deal with Bain that is paying him millions each year.
In contrast to Romney’s steadfast refusal to release his tax returns, George Romney (Mitt’s father) released 12 years worth of tax returns when he ran for president in 1968. Those returns showed that the elder Romney paid a 37 percent effective tax rate.
Warren Buffet understands Romney, his situation and status:
Buffett On Why Romney Should Pay Higher Taxes: He’s Just ‘Shoving Around Money,’ Not ‘Straining His Back’
By Pat Garofalo on Jan 23, 2012 at 12:45 pm
Romney has refused to sign on to the Obama administration’s “Buffett rule,” which aims to ensure that millionaires can’t dodge taxes to the extent that they’re paying less than teachers. Today, billionaire investor Warren Buffett himself was asked about Romney’s tax rate, replying
He makes his money the same way I make my money. He makes money by moving around big bucks, not by straining his back and going to work cleaning the toilets or whatever it may be. He makes it shoving around money. I make it shoving around money. If you look at the 400 highest incomes in the United States, they average $220 million. Something like 90 of them are effectively unemployed. They have no earned income, and that number has gone up over the years. [...]
There's a video, Buffett, from Bloomberg, on the ThinkProgress link. While the recent below zero cold snap in the metro area ended days ago, and there's been scant snow so far:
Many of those [Mitt Romney capital gains] investments are associated with Bain Capital, the private equity firm Romney co-founded, which has an extensive history of using such tax havens to boost profits at a multi-billion dollar cost to American taxpayers. Those tax havens aren’t just causing outrage among Americans, however. The Cayman Islands are a British territory, and British MP John Cryer, a former member of the British Treasury Select Committee, told the British blog Left Foot Forward that it is “a disgrace” that corporations and investors like Romney and Bain can use them to avoid paying taxes:
photo and story, this link
“As a former member of the Treasury select committee, I think it is a disgrace that the Cayman Islands, a tax haven, can enable wealthy corporations and individuals such as Mitt Romney and others in the wealthiest 1% to avoid tax and still be cloaked in secrecy. Meanwhile all across the western world, hard-working people are seeing their living standards and take-home pay stagnate or reduced.
“It reminds me of President Kennedy’s comment in his inaugural speech, ‘pay any price, bear any burden’. Except it’s hard-working, modestly paid majority who are bearing that burden.”
Cryer proposed a motion last week calling on the House of Commons to immediately close the Cayman Islands as a tax haven. The motion states that the House is “alarmed” by reports that Romney and others are using the Caymans to “avoid paying the same tax rate as other US citizens” and “concerned about the continued use of tax havens by the top 1% in the US and UK to avoid paying the correct tax in their own country.” The motion then “calls on the UK government to introduce urgent legislation to help close tax havens and increase transparency so that the very richest pay their fair share of tax in their respective countries.”
The United States loses $100 billion a year in tax revenue to offshore tax havens [...]
I'll bet Romney is the type who will sit at a poker table deliberately with stakes on the table large enough to bluff others out of keeping good hands by setting the price to call and stay at a comfortable and adventitious level, for him, (but I would not dare risk a ten grand loss on any such offhand wager - I could not afford the risk).
While sparring with Rick Perry over healthcare at the [early December] debate in Des Moines, Romney challenged Perry to a wager. The stakes? A cool 10 grand.
That’s not exactly your typical bar bet.
Perry had accused Romney of altering a paperback version of his book to delete a line that had Romney wanting to make his Massachusetts healthcare plan a model for the rest of the nation, suggesting that Romney is a champion of an individual mandate to force people to purchase health insurance.
Romney said that wasn’t true.
“I'll tell you what. 10,000 bucks? Ten-thousand-dollar bet?” Romney said.
“I’m not in the betting business,” Perry replied.
Romney, who likes to talk about his work creating jobs as a venture capitalist in the private sector, is estimated to be worth between $190 million and $250 million.
Should he go on to win the Republican nomination, the clip from Saturday's debate may be replayed again and again in Democratic attack ads.
The way to handle the Taliban? I would bet not.
More on the man's taxes, an online item dated yesterday, and Geez, 550 pages - not using the short form -- for certain:
After weeks of refusals and equivocation, Mitt Romney finally released his tax returns last night to a handful of media outlets, showing that he made $21.7 million in 2010 and $20.9 million last year. He only actually released one year of returns, 2010, and his estimated return for 2011, even though many have called on him to follow the precedent set by his father and release many more years of returns.
Nonetheless, there is much to learn from the astonishing 550 pages of returns Romney released:
1. Romney paid a lower tax rate than many middle-class Americans [...]
2. Romney makes more in a day than the average American makes in a year, and becomes a 1 percenter every week [...]
3. Romney paid almost nothing in payroll taxes: Romney contributed just .1 percent of his income to Social Security and Medicare in 2010 via the payroll tax because the tax is only assessed on earned wages, but all of Romney’s income came from investments. Most working Americans pay 7.65 percent.
4. Romney has accounts in countries notorious for tax dodging [...]
5. Romney and Gingrich’s tax plans would slash Romney’s taxes [...]
6. Romney needs four lawyers, including the former IRS commissioner to defend his tax plan [...]
Another small revelation from Romney’s returns is that while Romney said his speaking fees amounted to “not very much” in terms of income, he actually made $111,000 in speaking fees in 2011 and $529,000 in 2010, as Politico’s Ken Vogel points out.
UPDATE - An earlier version of this post speculated that Romney likely paid nothing in payroll taxes because he did not earn any wages, while his full returns show that he in fact paid the tax on a tiny fraction of his income from speaking fees.
And, I know, already, there will be the bleating Republicans - that Crabgrass is just a ton of envy refrain. Well, let's see - am I really the only one thinking the wealthy should pay more:
Last night in his State of the Union address, President Obama once again urged Congress to pass the Buffett rule, noting that 25 percent of American millionaires pay less in taxes that millions of families in the middle-class. Republicans were quick to dismiss his request as “the politics of envy and division.” However, multi-billionaire Bill Gates called his policy something else entirely: “That’s just justice.”
In an interview with the BBC, Gates noted “taxes are going to have to go up” and thus he’d prefer that they “go up more on the rich than everyone else.” There needs to be “a sense of shared sacrifice,” he said, adding, “right now, I don’t feel like people like myself are paying as much as we should”
Is Romney's "sense of shared sacrifice" that he had to pay the lawyer and accountant fees for the 550 pages. His sacrifice, and the 99% is not offering to share it, so he's okay? I guess. But, when he wants my vote ...