Lakhota
Diamond Member
By Alec MacGillis
In January, in a South Carolina debate just before that state's primary, Newt Gingrich hit Mitt Romney hard for releasing barely any of his tax returns: Look, hes got to decide and the people of South Carolina have to decide. But if theres anything in there that is going to help us lose the election, we should know it before the nomination. And if theres nothing in there, why not release it? The audience applauded, and when Gingrich proceeded to trounce Romney at the polls the following Saturday, voters told me that Romneys secrecy about his tax returns was part of their decisionthey didn't necessarily care what tax rate Romney paid, but they didnt like his declaration that it wasnt any of their business.
Back then, it seemed only a matter of time before Romney would buckle to pressure and release a critical mass of returnsif not the 12 years worth that his father released when he ran for president, then at least, say, five or six. But here we are, with just five days until the election, and Romney has released no more than the two years he agreed to release back during the primaries. This has left voters in near-total darkness about basic questions about his very recent past. As tax experts have noted, there are any number of reasons why Romney doesnt want to release more of his taxesits possible he participated in an IRS amnesty program for secret foreign bank accounts; its more possible he gamed the system to avoid taxes on his huge retirement account and his sons $100 million trust fund, or that he paid very, very low rates these past couple years as a result of a tax code that favors people like him whose income is mainly taxed as capital gains. (In releasing his belated 2011 returns in September, Romney asserted, without providing any evidence, that he had not paid an effective rate lower than 13 percent during the past decade.) Just this week, Bloomberg News offered a new shred of insight, into the way that Romney used the Mormon church to shelter some of his investment gains from taxes. But the fact is, barring some future leak, we're simply not going to find out what was so worrisome in Romneys taxes from only a few years ago.
Not only that, Romney hasunlike candidates Barack Obama, George W. Bush and John McCainrefused to identify his bundlers,the hundreds of people who have each raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for him. This has, among other things, spared him the sort of stories that Obama's had to contend with, looking at the unsavory connections and interests of his fundraisers. And, of course, Romney has provided exceedingly scant detail on basic elements of his platform, such as how he proposes to replace the Affordable Care Act and the Dodd-Frank law, both of which he says he will do away with, and how he plans to make up the revenue lost from cutting tax rates by 20 percent across the board. The candidate has not answered any questions from reporters in the past three weeks.
More: Romney Got Through The Campaign Without Disclosing More Tax Returns Or His List Of Bundlers And Much More. Did It Cost Him? | The New Republic