This afternoon, Mitt Romney's campaign released his final 2011 tax returns, among other things. What was conspicuously missing, was his back tax returns prior to 2010. Instead, the campaign offered a statement from Price Waterhouse Cooper, the company that prepared Mitt's taxes. The good news for Mitt's supporters: he paid taxes between 1990 and 2009, averaging 20.1% with the lowest at 13.66% of AGI.
But the PWC statement does not tell us HOW Mitt treated his income from Bain, during the years he said he was out of the loop. Did he treat it as passive or active?
Obviously, it would be a huge political trap to release any of the returns during the period that he was away.
If his PWC accountants listed his income from Bain as active, it would tend to show that Mitt lied to the American voters, because the converse would otherwise show that PWC misrepresented to the IRS, Mitt's income, and therefore Mitt may have cheated the IRS out of taxes.
If I were part of the Democratic political machine (or the media), I'd push Mitt to release his 2000 tax returns; forget all other years and just focus on 2000 (no amended ones past 2002!)
Quite frankly, Mitt should release his 2000 return; if it showed that he listed Bain as passive income, he wins the rhetoric over the job cuts Bain performed during that period. In one fell swoop he'd neuter Democratic ads attacking him over American job losses from a result of Bain's actions.
No comments:
Post a Comment