Romney's tax returns
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Anonymous
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We've seen this picture before:
A Republican presidential candidate refuses to release tax returns, citing a need for privacy. Even Sarah Palin eventually was cowed by media and public pressure to release hers. Romney is going down that path. Assuming he's still even in the race come March, I imagine the chorus for him to release his will increase dramatically. I imagine the reason Team Romney don't want to release them is 1) A lot of his partnership income probably comes from offshore entities; and 2) Much of his income is taxed as carried interest (capital gains rate of 15%). They're playing this wrong. Dump them this week, not just before April 15 when everyone is paying attention. |
Anonymous
| The tax return dump usually happens later in the primary season (Obama in March of 08/McCain April) when there are fewer candidates. It is silly to release them now and even sillier for people to think it is a big story. |
jsteele
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It's Romney. He will change his position regarding the release of tax returns any day now. Then, he will change it back. Then, he will change, well you know how it goes.
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Anonymous
| Who cares? He's crazy wealthy and much too involved in politics for far too long to not have made sure his taxes were legal all along. What are we going to find? |
Anonymous
It may be smart to wait. But the OP is right. He probably has a lot of carried interest. And this is the single most controversial tax rate loophole. VCs and hedge fund managers are taxed on income as though they made a capital investment. There is no justification. |
Anonymous
Liberals want to show that he's a wealthy white male and thus isn't qualified (in their eyes) to be president. |
Anonymous
What are his qualifications exactly? |
Anonymous
Is that why John Kerry lost? |
Anonymous
You may be right that the tax returns are an opportunity to state again how rich he is but everyone is already well aware of how rich he is. He's freaking rich! I actually trust rich candidates more on some level. Romney can already go anywhere in the world, eat wherever he wants, meet with important people. That can't be his motivation for running. |
Anonymous
I would be astonished if there was even one iota of illegality in his taxes. He's been in politics for a ling time, people with that much money don't need to cheat on their taxes, and the risk is too great (except for the monumentally stupid, which he is not). What I do expect, as other PPs have said, is that he's taken advantage of so many loopholes and tax preferences (capital gains, carried interest, etc.) that his marginal tax rate is obscenely low. And that will become an issue, especially when he is advocating not raising the top tax rates. |
Anonymous
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There is no doubt that it's going to be almost entirely carried interest and capital gains tax, but his supporters will claim that that's fair because he's a "job creator."
Given the mixed record of the leveraged buy outs he conducted at Bain, it would be interesting if someone calculated whether on balance, he's a net "job creator" or "job destroyer." |
Anonymous
There was an article in the NYT a couple of days ago describing what he was like at HBS. Friends characterized him as uninterested in any issues and single-mindedly focused on getting rich, because in his world "that's how you keep score." I think that from that description one can also infer that now that he's fulfilled his ambition to become wealthy, this is just the next step in keeping score, and he's not doing this out of any particular desire to help his country. Also, if he had wanted to use his HBS education to help his fellow Americans, he could have held many many executive positions that would have resulted in really creating jobs, as opposed to using financial maneuvers to enrich yourself, the companies you are taking over and saddling with debt be damned in the process. So in other words he sounds like the standard issue megalomaniac running for office. No big deal there. I don't necessarily think he would be any worse than Obama, but I am deathly afraid of the possible lethal combination of a Republican president and a bunch of petulant tea party loons governing this country. |
Anonymous
From everything I've seen he was a "wealth creator" for Bain but a job destroyer. Can't make things cheap enough in the US? Fine, we'll extract cash from the business and shut it down. Move to China if you want a job (at least one he created). |
takoma
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| He may, on balance, have destroyed more jobs than he created at Bain. But given the theory of the free market, his job was to make money and the market would take care of the rest. And as was conjectured above, his wealth probably comes largely from investment, and investment creates jobs -- or so goes the theory. |
Anonymous
| Bump. From 12/23. You read it here first, folks, exactly one month ago. |