Reply to HARRY REID-ROMNEY PAID ZERO, NOTHING IN TAXES 10 Years

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]After bashing Romney for a week (and oh boy did you deserve it, Mittens), I'm going to go sympathetic on him for a minute.

I bet that it's true, but not for dishonest reasons.  He could be holding a lot of loss carryforwards, which would be totally legitimate tax-wise but hard to explain to a bunch of people who have no idea what they are.

If this is true, it makes me sympathetic to him.  His tax bill could be zero for justifiable reasons that would nevertheless lose him a lot of trust and that would be unfair.

So I might blame him for using foreign tax shelters.  I might despise him and his hedge fund supporters for buying off the politicians to ensure they get a 15% rate on carried interest.  But I can't say a word about NOL carryforwards.  That's just basic fairness.[/quote]

I am a tax lawyer and I am having problems conceiving of a situation where someone would have millions and millions of dollars of NOLs on their personal income tax return (absent some sort of disaster, like maybe a set of tornados wiped out all his mansions, or someone stole the Hope diamond from him).  What sort of deductible business expenses do you think he incurred while running Bain?[/quote]

I'm not talking about business expenses.  I'm saying that he realized lots and lots of capital losses on his portfolio.  Not hard to do over the last decade.[/quote]

I think you should add yourself to the people who don't understand NOLs, at the very least.  A capital loss is entirely different from an operating loss.  I still think it's very unlikely he realized sufficient capital losses to entirely offset his income tax liability, while making hundreds of millions of dollars.

I would believe he has a GRAT but I am trying to think through how that would help him on income tax-- it's usually used to avoid transfer taxes but I think the recipient/beneficiary would still owe income tax when the appreciation is realized?

[/quote]That's how the IRS classifies it. http://www.irs.gov/publications/p536/ar02.html. What kind oof tax expert are you?

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