Taxing Mitt

New Thoughts About What's Hiding In Mitt's Tax Returns
Ann Romney Says Enough Is Public About Mitt's Money
Tax Professional's Scrutinize Mitt's Returns
Mitt Romney Taxes For 2010 Not Fully Disclosed
Google Mitt Romney and Taxes

It seems like everyone is speculating about why Mitt won't release his tax returns.  The only one thing we know for certain is that he is not releasing them (yet).  So before he releases them and spoils my post here is my take on possible reasons why Governor Romney will not release his tax returns.

(1) Rope-A-Dope:  There is nothing bad in the tax returns however Romney's team saw the media and Democratic operatives start focus on Mitt's taxes and decided to play rope-a-dope with them.  There is limited money and media time / space for Dems to get their anti-Mitt message across.  By keeping the enemy attacking on the tax return issue it takes up the bandwidth for other attacks that could be leveled at Mitt.   Then later on in the campaign Mitt will release his tax returns, there will be nothing bad in them, the tax issue will disappear, and the Dems will have wasted their resources.  I would not be surprised if this is a conscious strategy that the Obama team employed with the birth certificate issue.

(2) Matter of Principle:   The Romney's feel that as a matter of principle they should not have to open up their life to the public in order to run for President.  I don't think that that is a winning argument in the long run.  Polling says that the majority public agrees that they should release more returns.  I am going to go out on a limb and say that the public believes that in general people have a right to a sphere of privacy, however if a person chooses to run for a high public office there are certain privicies that they give up - one being the sources of their income.  If the Romney's were going to hold out on principle one would think they would want to be more vocal about what the principle is exactly.  If they go this route my guess is that they end up releasing more information.  And it is possible that when they do there is nothing particularly bad in the returns.  Hence by rope-a-dope there may be little harm to standing on principle even if you end up capitulating later on.

(3) Something Illegal:  Governor Romney can afford some pretty sharp tax advisers and he has been running for office for a while - so I would be shocked if he did anything blatantly illegal with his taxes.  It may be possible that they were on the edge of legality and the location of where the edge is got reinterpreted.  We know he had money at UBS in Switzerland and UBS got hit for helping wealthy Americans hide income - so I guess that is possible.  But I would bet against it.

(4) No Taxes:  There is a lot of speculation that Governor Romney may have paid little or no taxes in years prior to 2010 - and that this will be very unpopular.  Now despite being a partisan Democrat I am going to come to Mitt's defense.  If he paid no taxes but did it legally I don't have a problem with that.  Or at least I don't have a problem with his actions  If a tax shelter is in the tax code then he has as much right to use it as anyone else does.  What I do have a problem with is that fact that there are tax shelters in the tax code that could allow a multi-multi-millionaire with millions in income to avoid paying any federal income tax.  But if this is in fact the case then Mitt is clean so far as I a concerned.

I may be an army of one on this, but I am way way more concerned about Governor Romney's views on overall US tax policy than I am with his personal tax returns.