“It’s August Already”: Will We Ever Get To See Romney’s 2011 Tax Return?
I don’t know about you, but this year I filed my taxes just before the April 15 deadline. Most people do. But if you need to, you can file for an extension from the IRS. That’s what Mitt Romney did. And if you look around the discussion about his taxes, you’ll find that everyone keeps referring to the “two years of tax returns” Romney has agreed to release. But what people don’t mention is that Romney hasn’t actually released two years of tax returns. He released one year, his 2010 return (and even that was incomplete). But we haven’t seen his 2011 return. He keeps saying he’ll release it when it’s ready, but is it going to be ready before November?
In fairness, Mitt Romney’s taxes are really, really complicated. He has so many different income streams and accounts and pass-throughs and roundabouts and double-flipping financial McTwists that it takes a team of accountants to prepare the documents. His 2010 return ran to more than 200 pages. But it’s August. Maybe someone should ask whether the accountants are making progress.
My guess is that for the next three months, every time the question comes up, Romney will say that the return is being prepared, and he’ll release it as soon as it’s ready. And then lo and behold we’ll get to election day never having seen it.
From Romney’s perspective, this makes perfect strategic sense. Nobody seems interested in the 2011 return, so there isn’t much cost to putting it off, and if he does release it, that’ll mean a couple of days of stories about all the interesting stuff it contains. It’s essentially the same calculation as he’s using on the rest of his returns: there’s a cost to not releasing them, but it’s evidently smaller than the cost he anticipates from releasing them. So, voters: No tax returns for you!
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, August 6, 2012
“Righteous Tut-Tutting”: The “Missing Evidence” In Romney’s Tax Records
Harry Reid has provoked outrage among liberals as well as conservatives, who seem to believe he has violated propriety by repeating gossip about Mitt Romney’s taxes. The Senate leader says someone connected with Romney told him that the Republican candidate paid no income taxes for a period of ten years. Offended by Reid’s audacity, commentators on the right have indicted him for “McCarthyism” while others on the left have accused him of inventing the whole story.
Evidently the chief complaint against Reid — aside from aggressiveness unbecoming a Democrat — is that he cited “an extremely credible source” who he has so far declined to name. Some journalists have gone so far as to suggest that Reid must be lying because he won’t identify the source.
Despite all this righteous tut-tutting among the great and the good, in newspapers and magazines as well as on television, Reid’s critics simply have no way of knowing whether he is telling the truth or not. From the beginning, Reid himself admitted forthrightly that he has no way of being absolutely certain whether what he was told is factual or not, although he believes the person who said it was being truthful.
Many of Reid’s critics work for news outlets that rely on unnamed sources every day, of course, publishing assertions that range from the mundane to the outlandish. It is hard to see why an unnamed source quoted by a daily newspaper or a monthly magazine – or hidden behind a screen in a TV studio – is more credible than a person whispering in the ear of a United States Senator.
Indeed, several of the news outlets now barking at Reid have suffered their own episodes of scandalous embarrassment due to the exposure of invented sources and quotes (see Jayson Blair, Stephen Glass, etc. etc. etc.) . Yet they nevertheless continue to publish quotes from such unnamed individuals. After all, where else would Reid have learned that this is acceptable conduct?
Meanwhile Romney’s response is to demand that Reid “put up or shut up” – that is, reveal the name of his source. But that would prove nothing. As Reid has pointed out, only the former Bain executive can demonstrate conclusively that suspicions about his tax history are unfounded. Although the irritated Romney retorts that he has “paid a lot of taxes,” his denial won’t suffice as proof either. He could have paid hefty real estate taxes on his various homes and sales taxes on his purchases of cars, car elevators, powerboats, and other luxury goods, among other levies, while paying little or no federal income tax.
Obviously it would be simple for Romney to disprove Reid’s statement, which is unlike McCarthyite accusations that involve someone’s personal associations or state of mind. The necessary evidence is not only within Romney’s possession, but is material that candidates in his position normally release to the public and that the public expects to see. It is material that he previously surrendered to Senator John McCain’s campaign staff in 2008, when they were vetting him for a possible vice presidential nomination. (For now, they are conspicuously silent on the Reid controversy.)
There is a legal doctrine that applies to Romney’s current behavior, as Indiana attorney John Sullivan points out – and it doesn’t place the burden of proof on Reid:
At law, if a person in control of evidence refuses to produce the evidence, then the jury is instructed that there is a presumption that the evidence would be against the party failing to produce. It is called the “Missing Evidence” instruction.
The missing evidence is in Romney’s grasp, yet he insists that he will never produce it. Does anyone need instruction from a judge to make the correct inference?
By: Joe Conason, The National Memo, August 6, 2012
“Circumstantial Evidence”: Harry Reid Gets Under Mitt Romney’s Skin
Harry Reid has always been an unusual character. He’s often dismissed as a lightweight by Republicans (Senator Tom Coburn recently called him “incompetent and incapable”), but he is also an adept legislative maneuverer who has notched some extraordinary victories, perhaps none more notable than getting every Democrat in the Senate, even ones like Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman who live to make trouble for their own party, to vote for the Affordable Care Act. He’s very soft-spoken, speaking most of the time in a near-whisper, but he’s also willing to wield a shiv with an enthusiasm few in his party can muster.
And now, Reid is doing the kind of work that surrogates are supposed to do for presidential candidates: go out and make the kind of biting, maybe even questionable attack on the opponent that the candidate himself doesn’t want to be seen making. Reid has charged that a source at Bain Capital has told him privately that Mitt Romney didn’t pay any taxes for 10 years, and that’s why Romney won’t reveal his tax returns. When asked for concrete evidence beyond the word of an anonymous source, Reid says, “I don’t think the burden should be on me. The burden should be on him. He’s the one I’ve alleged has not paid any taxes. Why didn’t he release his tax returns?” Romney replied that Reid should “put up or shut up,” and offered an unsubstantiated charge of his own: “I’m looking forward to having Harry reveal his sources and we’ll probably find out it’s the White House.”
This episode gives us yet another case study in how different Republicans and Democrats are. If the parties were reversed, I guarantee you that you would not be able to find a single Republican to criticize what their colleague was doing. They’d meet the “McCarthyism!” charges with a laugh. But Democrats are conflicted, as they usually are about hardball politics (Jon Stewart tore Reid a new one over it). So let’s take a moment to sort through just how we should feel about this.
As a general principle, people shouldn’t toss around explosive charges without having evidence to back them up. And everyone is assuming that what Reid is saying is false, but there is at least some possibility that it’s true. It’s highly unlikely, but it’s possible. We can probably also assume that Reid didn’t make this up out of whole cloth—somebody did tell him this, though whether the person ought to be believed is something we can’t know.
Is this really akin to the birther controversy, as some have charged? It might be, if Romney had already released his tax returns and everyone knew what was in them. Remember that Obama released his birth certificate during the 2008 campaign, not to mention the fact that there were birth announcements in Hawaii newspapers. There was never any question but that the birthers were nuts, and Obama was never hiding anything. In this case, however, Romney is hiding something. His argument is that even though he will certainly demand to see multiple years of tax returns for his nominee for Secretary of Agriculture, and even though he’s certainly demanding to see multiple years of tax returns for the people he’s considering to be his running mate, the public doesn’t get to see his tax returns for more than one year. The absolute gall of his position—that he wants to be president of the United States, but doesn’t think he should have to give a full accounting of his finances—is really something to marvel at.
So just like it’s possible for the police to frame a guilty man, Reid is making what’s probably a false charge about a matter that Romney is improperly concealing from the electorate. If Romney wanted to, he could refute the charge and humiliate Reid tomorrow, just by releasing his returns. But it’s obvious that those returns contain something (or maybe multiple somethings) that Romney believes would be so damaging to his candidacy if voters knew about it that he’s willing to suffer all this bad press, and give the Obama campaign all this ammunition, to keep anyone from finding out.
And frankly, Mitt Romney has run his campaign in a manner so disreputable—constantly questioning Barack Obama’s patriotism, twisting his words out of context at every opportunity, running up a record of mendacity that stands out even among modern campaigns—that it’s hard to feel any sympathy for him when someone hits him a little below the belt.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, August 3, 2012
“Polarized, Inefficient and Unproductive”: Congressional Brinkmanship Threatens Economic Recovery
Congress’s job approval rating has slowly ticked up over the past six months—reaching a whopping 16 percent in the first half of July, with 78 percent disapproving. However, even these dismal numbers may be giving Congress too much credit, especially if legislators don’t act soon to avoid the looming fiscal cliff.
The scenario is eerily reminiscent of last spring, when political deadlock over the federal budget threatened a government shutdown before an 11th-hour deal was struck. Such political wrangling risked the loss of 800,000 jobs and the curtailment of crucial public services such as mortgage, passport, and loan processing—not to mention a massive disruption of a fragile economic recovery.
And another similar scenario just a few months later was the battle over the federal debt ceiling, gambling the possibility of another government shutdown. The haphazard deal reached during that policy fight, which failed to produce long-term practical solutions, laid the groundwork for what the country faces today.
The risks of the impending fiscal cliff are similar, if not graver. If current fiscal policy is allowed to take effect, the United States economy will simultaneously experience across-the-board income tax hikes and deep, automatic spending cuts of billions of dollars at the end of this year. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, these policies combined will contribute to lower incomes and higher unemployment numbers, slowing economic growth in 2013 to a mere 0.5 percent—and sending America into a double-dip recession.
The general assumption is that lawmakers will not let it get to that point; spending measures will be passed and tax cuts will be extended—though how much and for whom remains undecided. We all need to be asking when this is going to happen.
The 112th Congress has been called the most polarized, inefficient, and unproductive Congress in the 236-year history of the United States; and if they’re trying to fight that image, it sure is hard to tell. Legislators have shown little political will to act before the November presidential elections, dangerously close to the December 31 deadline when the first of a series of tax cuts will expire.
Such political brinkmanship is detrimental to the business environment and to a weak economic recovery. Small businesses are particularly hard hit by the uncertain climate created by Washington, and the threat of substantial tax increases has done nothing to ease fears. According to a Chamber of Commerce poll in July, over half of small business owners cite economic uncertainty as their top concern. Only 20 percent of those surveyed expected to hire in 2013.
This is bad news—with real implications for American prosperity. Small businesses are the key to economic recovery, spurring the majority of job creation. But to hire, business owners need the assurance of a stable investment environment in which they can secure returns. Regardless of whether America falls off the fiscal cliff, Congress’s behavior is already having detrimental effects on business and employment expectations. Amid discouraging jobs and industry reports, this political game is not something we can afford.
Lawmakers must realize that their gridlocked partisanship is hurting a nation already struggling. The 112th Congress has five months left in its term. Is it too naïve to hope things might change?
By: Steve Zelnak, U. S. News and World Report, August 3, 2012
“Romney’s Olympic Tax Myth”: Like A Designer Drug For The Fox News Set
More than catnip, this latest conservative tax myth is like a designer drug for the Fox News set, tailored perfectly for maximum impact at a time when Americans are hungry for anything Olympics-related. The offense: According to Americans for Tax Reform, Grover Norquist’s anti-tax outfit, President Obama’s IRS will tax Olympic winners up to $9,000 after they return home victorious from London. Conservative blogs are having a field day and Republican politicians are clamoring to capitalize on news. Darling Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida introduced a bill to exempt Olympians’ winnings from taxes and an adviser to Mitt Romney told reporters today, “He believes that there should be no taxation of the type you are describing.” They’re calling on Obama to support the plan.
The only problem: It’s not really true. In addition to their medals, American winners are given prize money from the U.S. Olympic Committee: $25,000 for gold, $15,000 for silver, and $10,000 for bronze. Their medals are also worth about $675, $385 and under $5, respectively. ATR says this all gets taxed at 35 percent, meaning a gold medalist owes $8,986, silver winners owe $5,385, and bronzers owe $3,502.
First off, the medals aren’t subject to taxes. Mark Jones, the communications director for the U.S. Olympic Committee told Salon in an email, “There is no ‘value’ to medals and there is no tax associated with it.”
As for the prize money, according to Politifact, ATR’s claim is “mostly false.” Consulting accountants who have worked with athletes, the fact-checking website noted that while the money is certainly taxable, athletes could deduct all the expenses that went into getting them to the podium, including travel costs, equipment, training and coaching fees from the previous year. Those are all considered business expenses, and could lower or even eliminate an athlete’s tax liability, depending how much they spent. Moreover, the 35 percent rate assumes athletes are in the highest income bracket, earning over $380,000 a year. While some Olympians certainly make millions, the majority of athletes probably do not. Many are barely scraping by, lacking sponsorship deals and unable to work full-time due to training demands. (We wrote yesterday about marathoner Guor Marial, who works from 11 p.m. to 9 a.m. at a home for mentally disabled adults every night so he can spend his days training.) This would put them in a lower tax bracket where they would pay far less, or even nothing, on their winnings, even before deductions.
A quick Nexis search revealed zero stories from 2004 and 2008 about Olympians being taxed for their winnings. One would think, judging by how much attention the story is getting today, that there would have been articles written then about disappointed athletes who returned home to find a hefty tax bill. We did find several stories like that, but they were all from Canada.
Moreover, while it may be politically popular to exempt Olympic winnings, there’s no real reason why they should be treated any differently from, say, the prize money that comes with winning a Nobel or Pulitzer Prize, or even the lottery, all of which are taxed like any other income. Past Nobel laureates have complained about being taxed for their prize, which at about $1.4 million, would produce a much larger bill than the gold medalist’s winnings.
“There is no principled basis to tax Olympic prizes any less than Nobel prizes, earnings or lottery winnings. If Congress wants to give Olympic winners more money, it should transparently give them more money rather than create an obscure tax expenditure to do exactly the same thing,” David Miller, a tax attorney with Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP in New York, told Salon.
So Rubio and Romney, are Nobel laureates any less deserving than Olympians of special treatment?
By: Alex Seitz-Wald, Salon, August 2, 2012
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