Obama camp demands Romney's tax returns from the 80's

No, god no however I don't need the government to pile on additional tax credits for folks deciding between business and first class for their bi-annual Paris shopping spree.

You can't force people to make bad investments; businesses aren't growing right now. This is a product of Obama's economic policies and uncertainty of his taxes to come.
Once that happens people look for other investment vehicles like gold. That's an effect, not a cause.

http://www.nber.org/digest/aug05/w11075.html

Not to bring any actual thought into another partisan SFN bitch fight (and I admit i didn't go to the actual article and only read what was posted of it here) but is there any actual proof that the Obama campaign actually demanded this stuff or are we just taking the Romney campaigns and the Fox News owned WSJs word for it?

I just have a hard time believing if the Obama campaign thought there was some ground to be made by demanding something like this they would go thru Newscorp.

Back when income tax rates were 90 percent they had little choice but to keep money in play...

IOW, the rich used to be job creators but they got a huge timeout and don't have to work hard anymore.

If it's what the Conservatards want to hear, the facts don't matter, as NCMikey used to say..

They had little choice but to do whatever they could to avoid taxes, but their investment opportunities were much the same. Stocks, government instruments, gold/commodities, et al... the opportunities haven't changed, only the desire to invest given whatever climate there is.

You say that, but feel free to post some sort of evidence that they don't have to work hard. Hard work is ingrained in many; the desire to earn doesn't wane just because you reached a certain plateau.

You are a good little dupe.

Tax them and make it advantageous to keep their wealth in play. The 1 percent paid the government off to lower tax rates so they could park their money in safe investments or sure-shot off-shoring deals and not have to work nearly as hard as they used to.

They are all laughing their ass off at us.

Romney Parks Millions in Cayman Islands


Romney Invests in Offshore Funds


By MATTHEW MOSK (@mattmosk) , BRIAN ROSS (@brianross) and MEGAN CHUCHMACH (@megcourtney)
Jan. 18, 2012

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.

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."


But tax experts tell ABC News there are other reasons Romney may not want the public viewing his returns. As one of the wealthiest candidates to run for president in recent times, Romney has used a variety of techniques to help minimize the taxes on his estimated $250 million fortune. In addition to paying the lower tax rate on his investment income, Romney has as much as $8 million invested in at least 12 funds listed on a Cayman Islands registry. Another investment, which Romney reports as being worth between $5 million and $25 million, shows up on securities records as having been domiciled in the Caymans.

Official documents reviewed by ABC News show that Bain Capital, the private equity partnership Romney once ran, has set up some 138 secretive offshore funds in the Caymans.

Romney campaign officials and those at Bain Capital tell ABC News that the purpose of setting up those accounts in the Cayman Islands is to help attract money from foreign investors, and that the accounts provide no tax advantage to American investors like Romney. Romney, the campaign said, has paid all U.S. taxes on income derived from those investments.

"The tax consequences to the Romneys are the very same whether the fund is domiciled here or another country," a campaign official said in response to questions. "Gov. and Mrs. Romney have money invested in funds that the trustee has determined to be attractive investment opportunities, and those funds are domiciled wherever the fund sponsors happen to organize the funds."
Bain officials called the decision to locate some funds offshore routine, and a benefit only to foreign investors who do not want to be subjected to U.S. taxes.

Tax experts agree that Romney remains subject to American taxes. But they say the offshore accounts have provided him -- and Bain -- with other potential financial benefits, such as higher management fees and greater foreign interest, all at the expense of the U.S. Treasury. Rebecca J. Wilkins, a tax policy expert with Citizens for Tax Justice, said the federal government loses an estimated $100 billion a year because of tax havens.

Blum, the D.C. tax lawyer, said working through an offshore investment vehicle allows the investor to "avoid a whole series of small traps in the tax code that ordinary people would face if they paid tax on an onshore basis."
Wilkins agreed, saying the "primary advantage to setting those funds up in an offshore jurisdiction like the Cayman Islands or Bermuda is it helps the investors avoid tax."

"It helps U.S. investors avoid U.S. tax," said Wilkins, "it helps foreign investors avoid taxes in their home country, so it's not illegal or improper to set those funds up in a foreign jurisdiction, but it makes it more attractive to investors because it helps them avoid paying taxes on that income."

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/romne...hore-tax-haven/story?id=15378566#.T35HztnLvTo

Confiscatory tax rates are going to spur investment

The wealthy have to work to stay as wealthy simply to keep up with the constant devaluation of our currency around here. Try keeping your money in a mattress for 10 years... at today's interest rates a savings account is much the same thing anyway.

I'm even ok with taxing offshore investment but you're loony if you think that these are a legitimate source of income.

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.

Romney campaign officials and those at Bain Capital tell ABC News that the purpose of setting up those accounts in the Cayman Islands is to help attract money from foreign investors, and that the accounts provide no tax advantage to American investors like Romney.

Tax experts agree that Romney remains subject to American taxes.

So you seem to be upset that other countries can hold our money more competitively than the US... we could try to compete here, ya know...

The point is Blargy, there is more capital parked now then ever before, if tax rates and tax incentives got the lazy rich off their asess and spurred them to put their money to work, then they may start to remotely resemble this self-appointed and self-aggrandized title of job creators. Right now they are sitting on their asses doing nothing. Vulture capitalist Romney included.

WGAS if more capital is parked there; look inward. We push it there by having high taxes.

If you want to spur investment, both domestic and foreign in our country we need to make it worthwhile. Trying to force investment punitively will just end up forcing everyone to look for loopholes. You can't make a frog sit in a boiling pot.

"Who gives a shit" ! What a revealing statement. It just confirms what a stupid asshole you are !

This.

Yes Blargy, taxes have never been lower but capital is still locked up tight.

I guess the job creators won't be happy till they pay no taxes at all, after all, they are the job creators.

Is Billy still replying to me? I have had him on ignore for weeks and told him that I was doing it so that I didn't have to read his jibberish. I'm assuming that your "This" is what that was because he's the only poster I have on ignore.

a) Taxes have been lower

b) In our current economic climate few want to risk unlocking capital

c) Stubbornly, you still come back to class warfare when everyone has a horse in this race

As tax rates rise, taxpayers reduce taxable income by

1. working less
2. retiring earlier
3. scaling back plans to start or expand businesses
4. moving activities to the underground economy
5. investing in tax-exempt securities



It's great for accountants though

What a lousy analogy ! "Everyone has a horse in this race" Yours is a jackass. You always assume the playing field is level and all are operating with the same advantages. Proff positive that you are some sort of juvenile.

Why do " WE need to make it "Worthwhile " ? That is complete bullshit. The companies are profiting from the tax relief and cuts and " WE ", have to make it worthwhile!!!

That is not the Tax payers responsibility . Let the private sector do it !

Try finding a job where you are really required to do something than have your older sister write posts for you.

This

That

May 31, 2011, 6:00 am
Are Taxes in the U.S. High or Low?

By BRUCE BARTLETT

Bruce Bartlett has served as an economic adviser in the White House, the Treasury Department and Congress.
Historically, the term “tax rate” has meant the average or effective tax rate — that is, taxes as a share of income. The broadest measure of the tax rate is total federal revenues divided by the gross domestic product.

By this measure, federal taxes are at their lowest level in more than 60 years. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that federal taxes would consume just 14.8 percent of G.D.P. this year. The last year in which revenues were lower was 1950, according to the Office of Management and Budget.

The postwar annual average is about 18.5 percent of G.D.P. Revenues averaged 18.2 percent of G.D.P. during Ronald Reagan’s administration; the lowest percentage during that administration was 17.3 percent of G.D.P. in 1984.
In short, by the broadest measure of the tax rate, the current level is unusually low and has been for some time. Revenues were 14.9 percent of G.D.P. in both 2009 and 2010.

Yet if one listens to Republicans, one would think that taxes have never been higher, that an excessive tax burden is the most important constraint holding back economic growth and that a big tax cut is exactly what the economy needs to get growing again.

Just last week, House Republicans released a new plan to reduce unemployment. Its principal provision would reduce the top statutory income tax rate on businesses and individuals to 25 percent from 35 percent. No evidence was offered for the Republican argument that cutting taxes for the well-to-do and big corporations would reduce unemployment; it was simply asserted as self-evident.

One would not know from the Republican document that corporate taxes are expected to raise just 1.3 percent of G.D.P. in revenue this year, about a third of what it was in the 1950s.

The G.O.P. says global competitiveness requires the United States to reduce its corporate tax rate. But the United States actually has the lowest corporate tax burden of any of the member nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.


Revenue Statistics of O.E.C.D. Member Countries, 2010

If taxes are low historically and in comparison with our global competitors, how are Republicans able to maintain that taxes are excessively high? They do so by ignoring the effective tax rate and concentrating solely on the statutory tax rate, which is often manipulated to make it appear that rates are much higher than they really are.

For example, Stephen Moore of The Wall Street Journal recently asserted that Democrats were trying to raise the top income tax rate to 62 percent from 35 percent. But most of the difference between these two rates is the payroll tax and state taxes that are already in existence. The rest consists largely of assuming tax increases that no one has formally proposed and that would be politically impossible to enact at the present time.

Ryan Chittum, in Columbia Journalism Review, responded with a commentary that called the Moore analysis “deeply disingenuous.”

Nevertheless, one routinely hears variations of the Moore argument from conservative commentators. By contrast, one almost never hears that total revenues are at their lowest level in two or three generations as a share of G.D.P. or that corporate tax revenues as a share of G.D.P. are the lowest among all major countries. One hears only that the statutory corporate tax rate in the United States is high compared with other countries, which is true but not necessarily relevant.

The economic importance of statutory tax rates is blown far out of proportion by Republicans looking for ways to make taxes look high when they are quite low. And they almost never note that the statutory tax rate applies only to the last dollar earned or that the effective tax rate is substantially lower even for the richest taxpayers and largest corporations because of tax exclusions, deductions, credits and the 15 percent top rate on dividends and capital gains.

The many adjustments to income permitted by the tax code, plus alternative tax rates on the largest sources of income of the wealthy, explain why the average federal income tax rate on the 400 richest people in America was 18.11 percent in 2008, according to the Internal Revenue Service, down from 26.38 percent when these data were first calculated in 1992. Among the top 400, 7.5 percent had an average tax rate of less than 10 percent, 25 percent paid between 10 and 15 percent, and 28 percent paid between 15 and 20 percent.

The truth of the matter is that federal taxes in the United States are very low. There is no reason to believe that reducing them further will do anything to raise growth or reduce unemployment.

As usual, Republicans are full of shit on this issue, bordering on committing seditious and traitorous acts every time one of them starts bleating about lowering taxes...

The republicans stated desire is too starve government, as well as those that depend on government, because they have judged those that do so as unworthy of drawing breath.

Fuck the republican party, their ideology and their subversive, divisive tactics.

Let them jump straight into the fire if they don't want to stay in our pot.

That was the point of my post. The 1 percent has shaped the current tax structure to their advantage, now they don't have to do a damn thing but sit back and rack it in. Put the rich back to work. Motivate them to be job creators again.

All you have to do is put a lid on the pot kid, then the frog has no choice.

Why is it wrong for someone to want to limit the amount of taxes they pay? Isn't the seizing of property in the same paragraph of the constitution as illegal searches? Peoples freedoms were sold down the river a long time ago when States started losing power to the feds.