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Let Them Eat Cayman
Author: Raine    Date: 07/19/2012 13:14:32

This morning, wife of Presidential Nominee Mitt Romney appeared on Good Morning America. She was asked about the couples tax and promptly told the interviewer:
“We’ve given all you people need to know and understand about our financial situation and how we live our life,”

You People.

I guess we shouldn't be too surprised. This is the same woman who said earlier this year: “It’s Mitt’s time. It’s our turn now.”

You will recall I wrote a post regarding Romneys appearance and attitude at the NAACP convention. I stated:
Instead of trying to connect with the people of the organization and the civil rights work they do, he treated them like others. He talked down to the attendees. He wasn't building bridges - he wasn't trying to understand why people still are struggling for equality. He didn't even try to identify... He walked in that room and told them how it is going to be. It was incredibly arrogant, completely out of touch.
We see his wife has the same sort of condescending aura. That was one week ago - almost a lifetime in politics. Since that post, there has been mounting pressure on the candidate to release his tax returns. It's getting quite intense with even republican pundits and politicians calling for Mitt Romney to release these returns. Candidate Romney is doubling down on his refusal to release them.

Ryan Grim, reporter for the Huffington Post writes:
Mitt Romney has been determined to resist releasing his tax returns at least since his bid for Massachusetts governor in 2002 and has been confident that he will never be forced to do so, several current and former Bain executives tell The Huffington Post. Had he thought otherwise, say the sources based on their longtime understanding of Romney, he never would have gone forward with his run for president.
So if this report is indeed true, he would not have run. That is a stunning position. Think about this for a moment: We have a man, President Obama, currently in office who not only has made public his tax returns but he has been forced to prove to the country that he is indeed a citizen. On the other side of things we have Mitt Romney who is rather 'unenthusiastic' about releasing his tax returns. We have been told that we have all we need to know. It's quite a double-standard we have between President Obama and Mitt Romney, no? And then there is this doozy. Romney sat down for an interview with the National Review. He was asked a question about his Cayman Island businesses.
From a political perspective, a lot of pundits wonder why you haven’t gotten rid of your offshore accounts. Can you explain why you have not done that?

Well, first of all, all of my investments are managed in a blind trust. By virtue of that, the decisions made by the trustee are the decisions that determine where the investments are. Secondly, the so-called offshore account in the Cayman Islands, for instance, is an account established by a U.S. firm to allow foreign investors to invest in U.S. enterprises and not be subject to taxes outside of their own jurisdiction. So in many instances, the investments in something of that nature are brought back into the United States. The world of finance is not as simple as some would have you believe. Sometimes a foreign entity is formed to allow foreign investors to invest in the United States, which may well be the case with the entities that Democrats are describing as foreign accounts.
Read that over. First he says it's a blind trust, and then he tells us what is going on in those accounts. THEN he says that he's allowing foreign companies not to pay American taxes. Here's a better explanation:
"He's basically admitting here that the Bain funds are set up in the Cayman Islands to help people avoid tax," said Rebecca Wilkins, senior counsel for federal tax policy at Citizens for Tax Justice, a nonprofit tax reform group. "If you want to cheat on your taxes, boy, they're making it really easy."

Since the Cayman Islands do not report information on their investors' accounts to other nations, however, such sub-companies don't merely help foreign investors avoid U.S. taxes, they help investors avoid paying taxes in other nations, as well. The ploy can even help American taxpayers invest in U.S. companies without accruing a tax bill with the IRS. By establishing personal offshore entities, Americans can pose as foreign investors and avoid paying U.S. taxes on investments in American firms.

"Even a U.S. investor pretending to be a foreign investor, by using a Bermuda or Cayman Islands shell entity, can avoid U.S. tax this way," Wilkins told HuffPost. "And we know that's going on. We know that U.S. investors are evading taxes by pretending to be foreigners."
As far as his previous tax returns, that's all you people need to know, according to the Romneys.

Or is it? The article also states this: The ploy can even help American taxpayers invest in U.S. companies without accruing a tax bill with the IRS. By establishing personal offshore entities, Americans can pose as foreign investors and avoid paying U.S. taxes on investments in American firms.

No Ms. Romney, "US People" do not have all we need to know. Americans don't like being spoken down to and they don't really like to be deceived. Mitt and Ann Romney are doing both. Romney is on record saying "In the political environment that exists today, the opposition research of the Obama campaign is looking for anything they can use to distract from the failure of the president to reignite our economy. And I’m simply not enthusiastic about giving them hundreds or thousands of more pages to pick through, distort, and lie about." I'm not enthusiastic about it either, but it is becoming more and more clear that he and his wife need to release them. The longer they don't, the more out of touch and delusional they appear.

Unless they really ARE hiding some bad stuff -- perhaps a Swiss bank account with UBS? Well funny that.
Although Romney's campaign declined to comment for this article, in January, Brad Malt, the manager of Ann Romney's blind trust, told reporters the Romneys had an account with Swiss bank UBS worth about $3 million, which generated roughly $1,700 in interest. Malt said the account was set up for "diversification" in 2003 -- a claim that puzzles tax and investment experts, who note that all of the investment options available in Switzerland are available in American accounts. Malt said the account was closed in 2010.

But Romney would only have had to report offshore bank accounts that generated interest on his tax returns. Other accounts that simply executed transactions and forwarded the money along to U.S. accounts would not have to be reported on the tax return. They would, however, have to be listed on the FBAR form Romney has not released to the public.

That Romney's disclosed account was with Swiss bank UBS has also raised eyebrows. In 2008, a whistleblower at the bank informed the IRS of thousands of accounts being operated by American clients to avoid paying U.S. taxes. For Americans, the coveted Swiss secrecy suddenly became a legal liability.

So much information was turned over to the IRS that it would have been extremely difficult for the agency to pursue cases against every offender. So the IRS established a special tax amnesty program, which allowed those who voluntarily turned themselves in to remain anonymous and pay limited penalties. Thousands of citizens have since come forward.

No, they haven't given ANYONE all we need to know. I want to know if Mitt Romney avoided paying taxes to the country he claims to love. He loves his money more than his country -- and I would be fine with that if he went back to the private sector. That entitlement is welcome in their circle of the private sector. As long as he wants to run for the highest office in the land Americans have a right to know. The American electorate has a right to know if they are paying more in taxes so Mitt Romney can pay less -- if any at all.

and
Raine
 

40 comments (Latest Comment: 07/20/2012 02:17:46 by livingonli)
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