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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Romney has fortune in Caribbean
THOMAS M. DEFRANK,, ALISON GENDAR, BILL HUTCHINSON
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Mitt Romney's campaign admitted Wednesday that he has millions invested in funds in a Caribbean tax haven — but insisted the GOP front-runner is no tax dodger.
The White House hopeful and his wife have poured at least $8 million into a dozen funds listed on a Cayman Islands registry, ABC News reported. Other securities records the network examined show Romney has an additional $5 million to $25 million cooling in the Caymans.
Romney’s offshore wheeling and dealing was not apparent on the financial disclosure form he filed in August that declared he made $9.6 million in 2010 and the first nine months of 2011, ABC News reported.
While the investments are still subject to U.S. tax rates, the network quoted a tax lawyer who said the offshore arrangement allows one to skirt other tax “traps” that an investor with dough in U.S. accounts would face. A private equity pro told the Daily News that the offshore accounts allow Romney to attract foreign investment.
Romney’s campaign spokeswoman, Andrea Saul, blasted ABC News’ reporting, saying the network is “flat wrong.”
“The Romneys’ investments in funds established in the Cayman Islands are taxed in the very same way they would be if those funds were established in the United States,” Saul added. “These are not tax havens and it is false to say so.”
“Taxes were paid on every penny,” scoffed a key Romney operative.
But an unaligned GOP consultant added that the truth is irrelevant. “This will be wrapped around his neck in the fall. It fits perfectly into Obama’s theme that Romney is another Republican robber baron getting rich at the expense of the poor middle class.”
Romney’s Caymans connection comes a day after the multimillionaire politician said on the stump in South Carolina that his income is taxed about 15%, or the same as a middle-class couple. His challenger, Newt Gingrich, countered that he pays 31% income tax.
“My goal is not to raise Mitt Romney’s taxes but to let everyone pay Romney’s rate,” Gingrich said during a campaign stop in South Carolina, which holds its high-stakes Republican primary Saturday.
By comparison, President Obama and his wife paid more than 25% in federal taxes in 2010 on income totalling $1.7 million, mostly from books he’s written.
Earlier this week, when pressured by his Republican competitors, Romney said he might release his tax records in April — well after he plans to have the GOP nomination in hand.
Romney, who founded and ran the private equity partnership Bain Capital until 1999, is believed to be worth at least $250 million.
tdefrank@nydailynews.com |
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Thu Jul 05, 2012 11:36 pm |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Romney’s wealth well hidden in offshore accounts: report
Mitt Romney’s massive fortune - estimated to be as high as $250 million - is held in a complex and opaque network of offshore havens that are impossible to penetrate, according to a report in Vanity Fair.
Comments (96)
By Kristen A. Lee / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Tuesday, July 3, 2012, 1:56 PM.
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Evan Vucci/AP
Romney has personal interests in at least a dozen Bain-related funds in the Caymen Islands worth as much as $30 million and hidden behind confidentiality disclaimers, reports Vanity Fair magazine.
Mitt Romney’s massive fortune - estimated to be as high as $250 million - is held in a complex and opaque network of offshore havens that are impossible to penetrate, according to a report in Vanity Fair.
Romney had a Swiss bank account and has interests in tax havens like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. The Romney campaign has insisted he does not use the havens to avoid paying U.S. taxes, but Vanity Fair wrote it is impossible to confirm that he is not seeing a savings.
The Republican candidate paid a 14 percent tax rate on $21.7 million in income in 2010 – far lower than the rate paid by many Americans because his earnings comes from investments rather than wages.
Vanity Fair noted that Romney has continued to receive large payments from Bain Capital since leaving the private equity firm in 1999.
Romney has personal interests in at least a dozen of the 138 or more funds organized by Bain in the Cayman Islands. Vanity Fair said the Romney-related funds are worth as much as $30 million and hidden behind confidentiality disclaimers.
READ MORE: MITT ROMNEY HOLDS MILLIONS IN CAYMAN ISLES TAX HAVEN, BUT SAYS 'I'M NO TAX DODGER'
The report also raised questions about Romney’s blind trusts, which are used by politicians to remove conflicts of interests by turning investment control over to an independent trustee.
Although the Romneys’ trust is supposedly “blind,” it invested $10 million in the startup of a fund cofounded by their oldest son, Tagg, in 2010. Another co-founder was Spencer Zwick, a former top fundraiser for the Romney campaign.
R. Bradford Malt, who manages the trust, has previously said he invested in Tagg’s Solamere Founders Fund without consulting Mitt or Ann Romney.
Romney’s financial disclosure form lists 25 such investments in an open-ended category labeled “over $1 million,” Vanity Fair reported. Many of them are set up in tax havens like the Cayman Islands.
Meanwhile, the Romney campaign is distancing itself from the CEO of Barclays, who stepped down from the British bank Tuesday amid an interest-rate fixing scandal.
Robert Diamond will no longer co-host a London fundraiser scheduled for July 27 when Romney will be in town for the Olympics.
"Mr. Diamond decided to step aside as a co-host for the upcoming London reception to focus all his attention on Barclays,” Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul told The Financial Times. “We respect his decision." The fundraiser will go on without the former CEO.
Barclays was fined $453 million last week by U.S. and British regulators for submitting false reports on interbank borrowing rates between 2005 and 2009.
spanky mcwigglesworth39 minutes ago
When Mitt's father ran for president in 1968, he released 12 years of tax returns. He stated “one year could be a fluke, perhaps done for show.” Mitt has released one year, and that revealed he had declared accounts in Bermuda, The Cayman Islands and Switzerland. All countries that are tax havens and have secrecy laws to protect depositors. Not illegal, but highly suspect. Why not Germany, France or Italy? He may and I repeat may release a later year tax return, but he can't release a previous year. You see Mitt doesn't like to pay taxes. When he worked for Bain, they lobbied for the tax break that allows them to pay 15% on carried interest. When they wanted to close the loophole, Bain spent millions again on lobbying. When he was on the board of directors of Marriott, he was Audit Chairman. He reduced their tax rate to 6.8% through offshore tax dodges and sleazy loopholes. Enough of this, the real story starts below.
In 2009 the IRS had a tax amnesty for people that had money in undeclared Swiss bank accounts. The IRS was given a list of 4,500 names, and let the financial world know they were going to go after these people. More than 30,000 people came forward and the government collected 2.7 billion in taxes and penalties. The company that came forward with these names was UBS, the same company that Mitt has his "declared" account with. Some believe up to 10 trillion dollars are stashed in tax havens by Americans. His staff was sweating bullets in January when he released his tax release. Now that there are calls for him to release his previous tax returns, they are back in panic mode. They have no way to explain the mysterious appearing accounts and the sudden surge in assets. If he does release them, look for white out and a copy of Photo Shop at his campaign office.
DREGstudios1 day ago
Is there any doubt that a Romney administration would favor the rich and increase the income gap in our country? Mitt is a pariah in Mormon Clothing and will stop at nothing to expand an empire of greed for the rich in this country. Can his sacred Mormon underwear gain him enough donations to buy this election? See for yourself as Mitt dons his tighty-whities from the Good Lord Himself at http://dregstudiosart.blogspot.com/2012/05/mitt-romneys-magic-mormon-underwear.html |
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Thu Jul 05, 2012 11:45 pm |
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twotap
F L I N T O I D
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http://specfriggintacular.wordpress.com/2012/03/02/mitt-romney-donates-entire-inheritance-to-byu-college-scholarship-funds/
Mitt Romney Donates Entire Inheritance to BYU College Scholarship Funds
Posted on March 2, 2012 by specfriggintacular
When Mitt Romney’s father passed away in 1995, he left an inheritance to Mitt totaling $1 million. Romney turned around and donated that inheritance money to Brigham Young University for the George W. Romney School of Public Management. This is an institute of public management that helps young people learn about government and about serving in public service.
The money goes to economically disadvantaged students wishing to purse a higher education in the field of public management and government.
But Romney’s charitable giving’s did not begin nor stop with his giving away of his entire inheritance he received in 1995.
Donating 2002 Olympic Salary
Running an Olympics comes with a hefty salary, $275,000 per year to be exact and for Romney that would have been a total of $825,000. However, when Romney was asked to rescue the Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah when it was bleeding hundreds-of-millions of dollars due to fraud, abuse and mismanagement, instead of taking the salary for himself, he donate his entire salary + severance payments to charitable organizations as well as donating $1 MILLION of his own money to the Olympics.
Refusing Salary as Governor of Massachusetts
When Romney was asked by state leaders and prominent member in the state of Mass. to run for governor because their state had a $3 BILLION deficit while having the highest unemployment rate in the country; Romney not only said he would take on the task, but when he did win the election he refused to take the $135,000 annual salary his entire term as governor.
Continued Charitable Giving
The Romney’s give millions annually to charities either through their church, their charitable organization or organizations directly. The Romney’s tax returns that were release this past January 2012 show that the Romney’s donated over $4 million alone to charity via their church and other organizations in 2011 and another $3 million in 2010. Other reports also go on to note that the Romney’s give about 16% of their income to charity annually.
Ironically, we can find the left bashing the Romney’s for where they give their money – because clearly unless you give away YOUR MONEY to charities the left does not approve of, then it does not count. Here, the HuffPo is acknowledging the millions the Romney’s give away every year while bashing them for giving most of that money to their church as though the church does not turn around and help out those less fortunate with it.
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"If you like your current healthcare you can keep it, Period"!!
Barack Hussein Obama--- multiple times. |
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Fri Jul 06, 2012 7:50 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Romney's Swiss Bank Account Criticized By Top Democrats
Posted: 07/08/2012 12:07 pm Updated: 07/08/2012 1:08 pm
WASHINGTON -- Democrats repeatedly attacked Mitt Romney for his secretive offshore financial arrangements on Sunday, on the heels of a major Vanity Fair story detailing the presumptive Republican presidential nominee's Swiss bank account and various holdings in the Caribbean.
"He is the first and only candidate for U.S. president with a Swiss bank account, with tax shelters," Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said on CBS' "Face the Nation." "There is just no way to explain it."
Although Romney has closed the Swiss bank account and insists he paid normal U.S. taxes on all of his financial arrangements, both he and his GOP allies have had trouble explaining why Romney orchestrated such complex financial holdings in secretive tax-haven nations.
Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R), also appearing on "Face the Nation," did not respond directly to Durbin's discussion of Romney's tax status, shifting the discussion to President Barack Obama's economic record, and the weak economic recovery.
Appearing on ABC's "This Week," Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) countered criticism of Romney's financial holdings by attempting to associate them with his career in private equity.
"In terms of Governor Romney's financial success," Jindal said, "I'm happy that he's a successful businessman."
Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley (D), appearing with Jindal, repeatedly castigated Romney over the issue.
"Mitt Romney bets against America," O'Malley said. "He bet against America when he put his money in Swiss bank accounts and tax havens and shelters and also set up a secret company, the shell company in Bermuda, which, by the way, in order to avoid disclosure, he put in his wife's name right before he became governor of Massachusetts."
The Vanity Fair article was written by Nicholas Shaxson, whose book about tax havens, "Treasure Islands," is considered a classic by many tax policy experts. Shaxson reported that it is extremely difficult to discern exactly how much money Romney stashed in the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and Switzerland, because these jurisdictions are notoriously secretive, affording wealthy individuals and corporations broad protections from U.S. tax authorities.
On "Fox News Sunday," Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, argued that Romney has been unnecessarily secretive about his financial holdings, noting that he has only released one year's worth of tax returns. While Romney has released only his 2010 tax returns and an estimate for his 2011 filing, his own father, George Romney, disclosed 12 years' worth of data when he ran for president in the 1960s. Obama, meanwhile, has released tax records dating back to 2000.
"I'd really like to see Mitt Romney release more than one year of tax records because there's been disturbing reports recently that he's got a ... secretive Bermuda corporation that no one knows anything about, investment in the Caymans," Wasserman Schultz said. "Americans need to ask themselves: why does an American businessman need a Swiss bank account, and secretive investments like that?"
The Romney campaign pushed back against the criticism in a statement e-mailed to HuffPost. "Mitt Romney had a successful career in the private sector, pays every dime of taxes he owes, has given generously to charitable organizations, and served numerous causes greater than himself," said Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul.
Story updated to include comment from Romney campaign. |
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Sun Jul 08, 2012 3:16 pm |
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Dave Starr
F L I N T O I D
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| How about a compromise? Romney will release his financial records as soon as Obama releases his college records and original birth certificate. |
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I used to care, but I take a pill for that now.
Pushing buttons sure can be fun.
When a lion wants to go somewhere, he doesn’t worry about how many hyenas are in the way.
Paddle faster, I hear banjos. |
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Sun Jul 08, 2012 6:19 pm |
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twotap
F L I N T O I D
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Hey Webs you taking all your tax deductions?? Im betting you and the rest of the redistribute the money Dems damn well are. Well so does Romney and just about any other thinking taxpayer out there including your POTUS.
I would hope that the voters are less concerned about what Romney does with his "OWN" money and way more worried about what obama does with ours. |
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"If you like your current healthcare you can keep it, Period"!!
Barack Hussein Obama--- multiple times. |
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Mon Jul 09, 2012 6:53 am |
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