The IRS Is Aggressively Auditing "Global High-Wealth Individuals"—Like Mitt Romney

[Lakhota]

By Stephanie Mencimer

In 2009, IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman announced that the IRS had created a new task force to audit people he called "global high-wealth individuals." These new IRS targets, Shulman explained, have tens of millions of dollars in income and assets and "make use of sophisticated financial, business, and investment arrangements with complicated legal structures and tax consequences." They often have an intricate web of related business entities like S-corporations and other pass-through entities they control, along with various off-shore accounts and business entities. In other words, they're people like Mitt Romney.

There aren't that many people in the "global high-wealth individual" group—only about 8,000 taxpayers a year who have more than $10 million in annual income—and Romney is "exactly the kind of taxpayer the program was designed to look at," says Rebecca Wilkins, a lawyer at the Center for Tax Justice who used to work with rich clients as a CPA. It's possible for someone with a lot of income, like a corporate CEO, to have a fairly simple tax return, Wilkins says. But Romney's return from 2010 (the only completed one he's released so far) weighs in at 203 pages; 55 pages are simply devoted to disclosing the existence of a host of foreign transactions in tax havens like the Cayman Islands. In his domestic portfolio, there's Romney’s IRA, to which he was legally able to contribute only around $30,000 a year but which is now mysteriously worth between $21 and $102 million. It's the sort of stuff that the new IRS unit is supposed to vet.

Romney's campaign has said he's never been audited.

More: The IRS Is Aggressively Auditing "Global High-Wealth Individuals"

 

[Lakhota]

Good luck, Mitt...

 

[Sinjorri]

ooo thats great i wonder how much the IRS will have to give back much like when they went after Gloria Estefan and ended up having to pay her because they over taxed her.

Good news for the rich. Maybe the IRS will own to some mistakes.

 

[Oddball]

Wow...The IRS being misused to hassle politically expedient targets?

Shocked, shocked I tell you!

 

[del]

gee, i remember when people got rightfully upset when nixon used the irs for political reasons.

i guess it's different now.....somehow

hypocrites

 

[Lakhota]

Gee, I didn't see anything in the article that suggested the IRS was being misused.

 

[Oddball]

gee, i remember when people got rightfully upset when nixon used the irs for political reasons.

i guess it's different now.....somehow

hypocrites

Enemies list, anyone?

 

[freedombecki]

Gee, I didn't see anything in the article that suggested the IRS was being misused.

Your press only tattles on Obama's "enemies."

 

[Ariux]

The tax return of 2010 which Romney released shouldn't be able to withstand IRS scrutiny. E.g. technically, the losses Romney claimed on his hobby horse should be disallowed.

 

[del]

Gee, I didn't see anything in the article that suggested the IRS was being misused.

it's hard to see much with your head buried in your duodenum, you whiny pissant.

 

[del]

gee, i remember when people got rightfully upset when nixon used the irs for political reasons.

i guess it's different now.....somehow

hypocrites

Enemies list, anyone?

i'd rep you, but...

 

[Oddball]

Yeah...well....phantom rep accepted....

 

[buckeye45_73]

Gee, I didn't see anything in the article that suggested the IRS was being misused.

Obviously you thought of a partisan advantage that's how you think, You have never been objective in one thread....and that's why we all want SMALLER government, but you like being told what to do. he doesnt like thought or control, so he does this stuff:

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdFLPn30dvQ]Kevin Bacon - Fraternity Paddle - YouTube[/ame]

 

[OODA_Loop]

Since 2009 and no action against Romney ?

Proves there is nothing wrong.

 

[Claudette]

Since 2009 and no action against Romney ?

Proves there is nothing wrong.

LOL You beat me to it.

2009?? Really. Jeeze guess the IRS found jack.

 

[Stephanie]

You ever thought see the day when people were cheering the IRS, especially them going after a political opponent

this is the ObamaNation folks