Bain Files: Inside Mitt Romney’s Tax-Dodging Cayman Schemes

Democracy4Sale wrote: Certainly on the GOP side....

Nope. My expectations for morality and honesty are equally dismal for both sides of the aisle.

Or do you think Pelosi's admitted insider trading is a shining morality example?

Did she break the law? If so, is she being prosecuted for it? That seems to be the GOP "bar" today.... For the Righties, unless they do a "perp walk" and are filmed being taken away to a cell, it's "no harm, no foul."

Democracy4Sale wrote: Did she break the law?

No, and that's my point. Pelosi did insider trading because it's legal for congresscritters to do that - according the laws they passed.

Unless Romney broke laws, his tax returns don't matter.

Then I rest my case... When you are willing to hold RMoney and the vulture-capitalists to the same standard, then you have a point. Otherwise, it's just more partisan drivel....

Democracy4Sale wrote: Then I rest my case... When you are willing to hold RMoney and the vulture-capitalists to the same standard, then you have a point. Otherwise, it's just more partisan drivel....

And when you hold Pelosi to the same standards as Romney, then you have a point.

About the only person you can accuse of being really honest about what they're thinking is Akin, and you want him to quit

I just want to see Romney's tax returns... (Apparently Pelosi's records are already out there...)

Mitt Romney After Bain Capital: Leaked Documents Connect Candidate To Adelson, Casinos, Cigarettes

A treasure trove of leaked documents about Mitt Romney's finances may not contain earth-shattering revelations, but could at least make life awkward for the presumptive Republican nominee for president.

The documents were obtained and posted online by Gawker at a time of unusually high interest in Romney's finances. Though they are not nearly as revealing as the years of tax returns he refuses to release might be, they still have enough information and detail to make Romney uncomfortable. They show he has money indirectly invested in companies on which the Mormon church might frown and also highlight the lengths to which his complicated investments are shielded from taxes.

For example, Romney is invested in Sankaty High Yield Partners II LP, a debt fund affiliated with the private-equity firm Bain Capital, which Romney co-founded. Sankaty has loaned money to a variety of questionable companies, including the now-embattled Las Vegas Sands Corp., according to documents obtained by Gawker.

Romney’s link to the Adelson-owned corporation is also notable because Adelson has become one of the primary bankrollers of the Republican party in recent years. The man, who some refer to as the Republican George Soros, has spent $41.1 million so far to oust President Obama and other Democrats, according to the New Yorker, and he’s promised to spend as much as a hundred million dollars to achieve his goal.

And the document release also shines a light on Romney's indirect investments, through Sankaty, in companies that may not exactly jive with his squeaky clean Mormon image. In addition to Las Vegas Sands, the fund also lent money to American Media, the parent company of the National Enquirer, as well as other gambling-related businesses and a cigarette company.

The Mormon church opposes gambling, including lotteries, and encourages others to join the church in “opposing the legalization and government sponsorship of any form of gambling,” according to its website. The church also offers programs to help its members quit smoking.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/2 ... f=business

It just keeps getting worse...

Mitt Romney Tax Returns May Have Employed Legally Dubious Maneuvers, Tax Experts Say

The first scheme involves owning U.S. dividend-paying stocks in an offshore account and pretending, for accounting purposes, not to own the stock. Instead, the taxpayer tells the Internal Revenue Service that he owns a derivative product that is identical in every way to the stock -- except it isn't the stock, so therefore no U.S. taxes are owed. It's called a "total return equity swap," because the buyer still gets the benefit -- the "total return" -- of owning the stock, or equity.

"This use of total return equity swaps, such as to avoid the U.S. dividend withholding tax, was very widespread for more than a decade, and may not be dead yet, although the IRS issued a shot-across-the-bow Notice concerning the practice in 2010," writes Daniel Shaviro, the Wayne Perry Professor of Taxation at New York University School of Law. "But taxpayers who engaged in it to avoid the dividend withholding tax were coming perilously close to committing tax fraud, in cases where the economic equivalence to direct ownership was too great."

The second technique is "not legal," according to Victor Fleischer, a tax expert and professor of law at the University of Colorado. A taxpayer saves substantial amounts of money by pretending that regular income received as a management fee for running a private equity firm is not income, but is instead a capital gain. That drops the tax rate on that income from 35 percent to 15 percent.

Citing the Gawker documents, Fleischer notes that Bain engaged in the management-fee maneuver to reduce the tax bill of its investors. "Unlike carried interest, which is unseemly but perfectly legal, Bain’s management fee conversions are not legal. If challenged in court, Bain would lose. The Bain partners, in my opinion, misreported their income if they reported these converted fees as capital gain instead of ordinary income," he writes.

Shaviro, meanwhile, notes that Bain employed a version of the total return equity swap and says that taxpayers who engage in the practice have little legal justification for doing so.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/2 ... f=politics

It just keeps getting worse...

It just keeps getting worse... RMoney's going down.... :thumbsup: