Although it is not apparent on his financial disclosure form, Mitt Romney has millions of dollars of his personal wealth in investment funds set up in the Cayman Islands, a notorious Caribbean tax haven.Read the rest here.
A spokesperson for the Romney campaign says Romney follows all tax laws and he would pay the same in taxes regardless of where the funds are based.
As the race for the Republican nomination heats up, Mitt Romney is finding it increasingly difficult to maintain a shroud of secrecy around the details about his vast personal wealth, including, as ABC News has discovered, his investment in funds located offshore and his ability to pay a lower tax rate.
"His personal finances are a poster child of what's wrong with the American tax system," said Jack Blum, a Washington lawyer who is an authority on tax enforcement and offshore banking.
On Tuesday, Romney disclosed that he has been paying a far lower percentage in taxes than most Americans, around 15 percent of his annual earnings. It has been Romney's Republican rivals who have driven the tax issue onto center stage. For weeks, Romney has cited a desire for privacy as his reason for not sharing his tax returns -- a gesture of transparency that is now expected from presidential contenders.
"I can tell you we follow the tax laws," he said recently while on the campaign trail in New Hampshire. "And if there's an opportunity to save taxes, we like anybody else in this country will follow that opportunity."
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4 comments:
And yet he's perfectly comfortable sending off thousands of young men and women overseas to fight wars and put their lives on the line. That type of mentality really boggles the mind.
Of course he pays only 15% tax, because he lives off of his investments and not off of an earned salary, which most Americans do. So no, he's not "just like other Americans". He's part of the super-rich and only the super rich and the super low income pay low taxes. He's totally out of touch with mainstream Americans. (sorry, needed clarification...)
Offshore accounts have been available to all Americans ever since the term "offshore" became meaningful. The only difference between Mitt and the average American is quantitative.
On second thought, let's consider why the average American isn't aware of offshore banking's availability in the face of abundant research opportunities, such as the intellectually low-brow Wikipedia. Maybe being out of touch with the mainstream is a good thing.
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