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.
A spokesperson for the Romney campaign says Romney follows all tax laws and he would pay the same in taxes regardless of where the funds are based.
As the race for the Republican nomination heats up, Mitt Romney is finding it increasingly difficult to maintain a shroud of secrecy around the details about his vast personal wealth, including, as ABC News has discovered, his investment in funds located offshore and his ability to pay a lower tax rate.
“His personal finances are a poster child of what’s wrong with the American tax system,” said Jack Blum, a Washington lawyer who is an authority on tax enforcement and offshore banking. On Tuesday, Romney disclosed that he has been paying a far lower percentage in taxes than most Americans, around 15 percent of his annual earnings. It has been Romney’s Republican rivals who have driven the tax issue onto center stage. For weeks, Romney has cited a desire for privacy as his reason for not sharing his tax returns — a gesture of transparency that is now expected from presidential contenders.
“I can tell you we follow the tax laws,” he said recently while on the campaign trail in New Hampshire. “And if there’s an opportunity to save taxes, we like anybody else in this country will follow that opportunity.” 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.
This sounds a lot like the Congress Insider trading example, all perfectly legal, and completely unethical.
Speaking of Left and Right agreeing==it hasn’t been remarked on yet that NO ONE talks about BushtheRetard except to criticize him for being a big government conservative. Some if not many even admit to an error in voting for BushthesockPuppetRetard the second time as “the handwriting was on the wall.”
Let’s connect the dots: Mitt, “I was afraid of being fired too, Romboid can ONLY be viewed as fulfilling BushthecocainCowboy’s THIRD TERM. Does anyone really think his administration would be any better?
Just look. —– LOOK at his performance already in full view!
Sad politics in America. Ground Rumbling. Super Volcano. And we all do it to ourselves.
The really sad bit is that you appear to not think that Obama has been the third Bush term.
>the accounts provide no tax advantage to American investors like Romney.
From the ABC article, in contrast to the headline of tax shelters.
Don’t worry. Mission accomplished. Newt will win South Carolina.
From the ABC article:
“The tax consequences to the Romneys are the very same whether the fund is domiciled here or another country,” a campaign official said in response to questions. “Gov. and Mrs. Romney have money invested in funds that the trustee has determined to be attractive investment opportunities, and those funds are domiciled wherever the fund sponsors happen to organize the funds.”
Translation: We don’t actually do the tax sheltering, we hire someone to do it.
Seriously, if there was absolutely no difference in the tax burden, why would they put their money in a place made famous as a shady tax shelter?
Not plausible. Try again, Mitt.
TO get foreign money into the fund. This is the downside of Sarbanes Oxley, the DEA, Patriot Act and everything else the government does to monitor people and regulate money.
A lot of it has to do with that he invests in foreign currency as well, so not only does he hide his money, he keeps it in foreign denominations because he simply doesn’t have confidence in American cash.
bailouts is one word
offshore is one word
stateside is one word
Romney looks good in a suit. That’s all Amerika wants in a presidential candidate. We don’t know who the heck he IS but that won’t matter. We’ll find out soon enough, the hard way.
He’ll be another Ronald Reagan, only magnified. Will of course pay lip service to the Evangelical agenda, which is singularly obsessed with curbing women’s reproductive rights. A zygotes’ right to life is zealously protected, but they won’t lift a finger to help an unwanted baby once it’s actually born. The biggest political influence will be long-gone Jeebus & what he approves of & doesn’t. Retro politics lives again whilst the economy swirls the bowl.
Yeah, you guys just keep on yammering about which gang of plutocrats is better than the other. That’s been working out real good so far, huh?
#67–Dumb as a Rock==its called dealing with reality. Your alternative I suppose is some write in candidate or Ron Paul?
Have you ever read anything other than a comic book?
All the people who use your rationalization as the reason for why they vote Democrat or Republican are directly responsible for the mess this country is in. Voting for the lesser of evils is still voting for evil. There is no guarantee that a third party would do better, but there is decades of corroboration that hiring Rs an Ds just makes things increasingly worse.
And so yeah, I’d rather write in someone than share the responsibility for KNOWINGLY hiring someone bad. I’ll watch why 100,000,000 million idiots continue to foul their nest (and mine).
OH P/M==that is so demonstrably idiotic as to warrant only a dismissive response: any study of the pragmatism of third party candidates shows voting for them ushers in the worst candidate the voter would have wanted in a more rational world.
Silly to order your political thinking along lines of the shortest bumper sticker.
More comic books?
When you see that your choices (in this case probably Romney vs. Obama) is basically the same, then voting for a 3rd makes complete sense.
Voting for the status quo, is to me idiotic.
I didn’t like Obama and I didn’t like McCain….we got Obama, no better than McCain, and worse than Dumbya.
If I am right about the above options, I will vote for a 3rd party. Like I did last election.
HA HA HA! The church doesn’t pay any taxes!
Romney says:”Let them eat Cake!!!”
Romney wants to be President for the 1%ers !!!
As for the rest of us, it’s like Gerald Ford’s reply to New York City: “DROP DEAD !!!”
Ron Paul is playing to win. He is outright stealing delegates from the other candidates. There’s only 2200, and his supporters are trying to get selected as those by lying about how much they support one of the other candidates.
Bleep, I didn’t understand just how eat up with jealousy people are. Rupert Murdock and Obamas rich buddy among others are doing the same thing. This isn’t a tax scam. Its the law Congress passed and Romney is paying as much tax as he would if the money was state side not that the justice of that statement is going to matter to a bunch of people being eaten up with jealousy and envy and filled with spite because of it.
I will add that I’ve been doing some checking and the city of Nashville recently had to pay to get a bank to agree to hold a few million in deposits. In other words the banks literally don’t want the money. The only way they saw to make money off the deal was to charge to store it. They can get all the money they want for next to nothing from the Fed reserve because Bird brain Bernanke is giving it out for so near nothing as not to matter.
If you want to invest and make money it looks like the most reasonable option is offshore. On shore you may have to pay someone to hold it for you.
Banks don’t like to hold real money because they get lots of free virtual money to play with courtesy of the Federal Reserve.
This is why they don’t give a hoot about the person who puts their paycheck into the bank. Its pitiful pocket change to a bank that leverages their loot 42-1.
McCullough==your position is that voting for the least evil of candidates is still voting for evil? Thats a common expression of well motivated people who cut their own throats in the political arena. You aren’t being PRAGMATIC at all==just self destructive.
In addition, you are simply being stupid, dogmatic, or disingenuous to say “there was no difference” between Obama and McCain. EVERYTHING shares SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES with EVERYTHING ELSE. Sorry–but we have to be dogmatic about that simple reality. When you say two things are exactly the same, or there is no difference==one is denying reality.
Just because all politicians are self serving, corrupt, and tools of their corporate paymasters DOES NOT MEAN they are all the same nor do they support “the same” status quo. There was a difference between Algore and BushtheRetard. NO ONE thinks Algore would have invaded Iraq. NO ONE thinks Algore would have issues a BushtheRetard Billionaires Tax Relief Program. ======NO ONE!=====There is a difference. At that time, a vote for Saint Nader GOT BushtheRetard elected over Algore.
I could go on to Obama vs McCain, or Obama/Romney although I agree its hard to nail down just what Romney would do other than push for more tax breaks and off shoring of businesses in this time of need for a rational restructuring so I will leave that for a time when the history is a bit more clear.
Deal with Reality.
Actually that’s BS. Al Gore won that election. So your 3rd party arguments sinks like a stone.
Obama has completely disqualified himself as being fit to be president by signing the NDAA (along with anyone who supported it). He should be impeached immediately. How ANYONE would think of voting for BO after that act of TREASON is beyond my comprehension. Especially any Bullshit self-proclaimed Liberal like yourself. If you vote for Obama again, it tells me that you approve of the death of our Bill of Rights.
I cannot vote for a Treasonous President, and I cannot vote for a another Wall Street insider, so that leaves me no choice.
You’re just one of those stupid Americans who think we can only have 2 parties, black and white, vanilla or chocolate. Yawn. Glad I don’t live in your reality.
You are delusional, don’t we have a President that promised to basically end the Middle East wars, close gitmo, blah blah blah, and did none of it? So what does it matter if NO ONE thinks Gore would have done that stuff? People are wrong, politicians lie. If anything Obama has proven how anyone from either major party will do what the overlords want. It doesn’t matter. You aren’t voting for a person, but literally the status quo. I couldn’t agree with McCullough more on this. And of course people aren’t exactly the same, don’t be stupid, but there are shades of difference, or tiers, and the differences of major party candidates never put them in different tiers. ObamatheRetard is case in point. GoretheRetard would have been too if he was elected. I hate myself for even writing this, it’s pointless, but you are the reason these idiots keep getting elected. Stop voting already.
Mitt Romney is no where near as rich as boot-licker Buffet, who is behind on HIS taxes.
Good Point! Mitt Romney also has eaten nowhere near as many hotdogs in 5 minutes as has Takeru Kobayashi, who is behind on HIS french fries.
Freeloading is not capitalism.
Ha, ha. I’m watching Daily Show from yesterday: “The Mafia’s family business is being destroyed by the Governments enforcement of law under the Rico Statute which is against anti-MF*ing laissez faire F*ing Capitalism. The Mafioso Hit Man Ex-Con being interviewed appears to be totally serious but how was he found? I smell a rat!
this is why mitty boy is having such a hard time getting those tax receipts from his filling cabinet.
He doesn’t have any. Its all in the Island coconut club.
As if NOBODY in the GOP or the media knew anything about Mitt’s dodgy finances until this late in the game? Sure. I suspect that all the GOP’s top selects have significant skeletons in their closet. And it just a matter of time before they reveal them all, in order for Obama to easily trounce they final Republican nominee, in November. And in spite of all his virtues and clean living, it won’t be Ron Paul, if the GOP has they way.
I’ve noticed that the GOP’s main selling point (if not their only one) for any candidate, is that “He’s the best hope of defeating Obama”. That’s it?!! That’s all any of them are good for?! That it’s all just about gettin that black guy out of the White House. With Herman Cain long gone, the GOP can no longer claim it’s not about their unsubtle racism.
Later this week, there will be the President’s State of the Union address on Tv. And following it will be the Republican’s rebuttal. According to the record, this televised rebuttal crap didn’t start until 1966. When the Republicans dare to rebuff Johnson’s speech (apparently not brave enough to do Kennedy’s). And it was sporadic after than until 1982. Then the opposing party had something to say, every years since. Often, prerecorded. So it not really what I’d call a rebuttal. Unless they got advanced copies of the President’s address, to mull over for days. It’s just more political noise. Especially during an election year. To tear down the incumbent candidate. IOWs, negative campaigning, AGAIN!
Frankly I’m sick of a elected representatives that do little more than point out the faults of the opposing party, or it’s President. And offers very little in the way of workable practical solutions to current problems, that they won’t turn around and defeat in Congress, at some later date. Nor are they really expected to. It seems to be enough now, just to bad mouth the opposition. Meanwhile they legislate in earnest and in secret, for the wealthiest interests. THAT, they’ve always got time to do!