freeman2 wrote:No, Mccarthy-like tactics would be accusing a Clinton aide of helping the Muslim Brotherhood without any evidence.

First, that's not quite accurate. The actual statement was: "taken actions recently that have been enormously favorable to the Muslim Brotherhood and its interests." That is debatable, but demands more than a dismissal. Certainly, the Muslim Brotherhood has not suffered.

Second, it's not really on the same scale. At worst, what Bachmann and Co. did was make an accusation that is based on some thin evidence.

While we don't have direct evidence that there is anything wrong with Romney's tax returns, we do have circumstantial evidence to think there is . . .

You have absolutely no idea what "circumstantial evidence" means. You have zero, I repeat, zero circumstantial evidence. Nameless, maybe non-existent accuser(s) are not evidence, circumstantial or otherwise. Without a name, it's not even hearsay.

. . . and given that tax policy is a huge issue Romney's own tax returns have become an extremely relevant issue in this race and he should release them.

So, how about the White House releases a list of lobbyists it meets off premises?

There are many, many documents the White House is keeping secret that actually affect government spending and operation. Please explain why these are not important.

Your use of McCarthyism is misplaced--that is something your side of the aisle is doing.

Review history. Who is going to the floor of Congress (the Senate) and spreading rumors and innuendo against private citizens? Why, I think it's your side.

Stop drinking the Kool-Aid and get a cup of coffee and some fresh air.

Romney says he paid taxes, "a lot of taxes."

Reid says someone told him Romney paid "zero" taxes for 10 years.

If you think the latter is more likely, especially given Reid's penchant for partisan lying and the fact that a Reid insider said,

“What’s the downside? Jon Stewart getting all serious and haughty? Harry Reid could not care less,” said one Reid confidante. “There is no one in politics with a thicker skin. He’s having the last laugh. Reid’s strategy is working. It’s filling news holes and driving conversations.”

then it just affirms your inability to think critically.

We all know Romney has been considering a Presidential run since at least 2006 when he declined to run for reelection in MA. Do you think he prepped for it by failing to pay what he owed for 10 years?

If you do, you're not thinking.

Having been a a lawyer for 20 years I think I understand circumstantial evidence.

Here is a definition: "Circumstantial Evidence is also known as indirect evidence. It is distinguished from direct evidence, which, if believed, proves the existence of a particular fact without any inference or presumption required. Circumstantial evidence relates to a series of facts other than the particular fact sought to be proved. The party offering circumstantial evidence argues that this series of facts, by reason and experience, is so closely associated with the fact to be proved that the fact to be proved may be inferred simply from the existence of the circumstantial evidence."

The fact to be proven is that there is something very negative in Romney's tax returns (very negative meaning that he violated federal law or he paid substantial less than 13.9% in taxes). Here is the circumstantial eviidence to prove that fact:

(1) He has accounts in Bermuda, Cayman Islands and Switzerland (all tax havens)
(2) He has between 20 million and 100 in retirement accounts (pretty hard to do when the max yearly he can put in is $30,000)
(3) He only paid 13.9% in the tax return he did release
(4) He has not agreed to release more than two years of d tax returns even though most presidential candiidates release more, it is costing him politically, and his major policy proposal has to do with taxes,
(5) Occam's Raxor indicates that the most likely explanation for his not releasing tax returns is that he paid substantially less than 13.9% or that he violated federal law
(6) When asked if he paid less than 13.9% he was very circumspect in his answers, said he was going to look to see but then refused to do so.

If we saw the tax returns that would be direct evidence. But you can use indirect evidence to show that there is something negative in the tax returns. See the difference? McCarthyism would be like saying "youre a communist, prove you're not? Here we have plenty of indications that Romney was skirting the tax law, so he needs to show he did not go over the line. Now if you said someone was a Communist spy and Ithe evidence was that the person had donated to communist fronts, had visited the Soviet embassy, had gone to the Soviet Union, all of sudden came into a lot of money--maybe that person had better come with some evidence that all of that was innocent. All circumstantial evidence and not McCarthy-like, See the difference?

freeman2 wrote:Having been a a lawyer for 20 years I think I understand circumstantial evidence.

Here is a definition: "Circumstantial Evidence is also known as indirect evidence. It is distinguished from direct evidence, which, if believed, proves the existence of a particular fact without any inference or presumption required. Circumstantial evidence relates to a series of facts other than the particular fact sought to be proved. The party offering circumstantial evidence argues that this series of facts, by reason and experience, is so closely associated with the fact to be proved that the fact to be proved may be inferred simply from the existence of the circumstantial evidence."

The fact to be proven is that there is something very negative in Romney's tax returns (very negative meaning that he violated federal law or he paid substantial less than 13.9% in taxes). Here is the circumstantial eviidence to prove that fact:

(1) He has accounts in Bermuda, Cayman Islands and Switzerland (all tax havens)
(2) He has between 20 million and 100 in retirement accounts (pretty hard to do when the max yearly he can put in is $30,000)
(3) He only paid 13.9% in the tax return he did release
(4) He has not agreed to release more than two years of d tax returns even though most presidential candiidates release more, it is costing him politically, and his major policy proposal has to do with taxes,
(5) Occam's Raxor indicates that the most likely explanation for his not releasing tax returns is that he paid substantially less than 13.9% or that he violated federal law
(6) When asked if he paid less than 13.9% he was very circumspect in his answers, said he was going to look to see but then refused to do so.

If we saw the tax returns that would be direct evidence. But you can use indirect evidence to show that there is something negative in the tax returns. See the difference? McCarthyism would be like saying "youre a communist, prove you're not? Here we have plenty of indications that Romney was skirting the tax law, so he needs to show he did not go over the line. Now if you said someone was a Communist spy and Ithe evidence was that the person had donated to communist fronts, had visited the Soviet embassy, had gone to the Soviet Union, all of sudden came into a lot of money--maybe that person had better come with some evidence that all of that was innocent. All circumstantial evidence and not McCarthy-like, See the difference?

Well, YOU finally laid out some circumstances. Before, all you were citing was Reid's hearsay from an unnamed source.

Now, of the so-called circumstances, which would lead you to believe he paid ZERO income taxes for 10 years?

I would apply Occam's Razor to his planning since 2006 to run for President and actually running in 2008 and suggest your reasoning doesn't hold more than about a drop of water.

The only "drop" of circumstance is the IRA situation, which I agree is chin-scratching. Then again, you are not an accountant and neither am I. If there is a reasonable explanation for this, you have nothing.

(1) We already know about this. Do you know what the tax benefits are? Did he not pay any taxes before moving the money? If not, that would likely be a crime--but having them is not. There is no evidence he ever paid zero taxes.

(2) As I said, I think that is something that bears explanation, but far less than all the laws the President is breaking. Of course, you'd prefer not to talk about that or his horrific record. I don't blame you. I would accept an accountant's explanation of how this would be possible.

(3) So what? If it's what he owed, it's what he owed. Change the law if you don't like it.

(4) So what? It's the law.

(5) Nonsense. That's your twist on it. Occam's Razor is that he doesn't want to hand the Chicago Machine thousands of pages of ammo. If they're making baseless accusations based on anonymous and maybe non-existent phone calls, what would they make of deductions in amounts that exceed average Americans incomes? Even if there's nothing wrong, Obama and Co will make them seem sinister. It's what they do.

(6) Circumspection is cause for suspicion? Yeah, he should be more like Harry Reid--that would give him credibility in your eyes. Reid rigged a real estate deal for himself that netted him a bundle and is now steering business to his son. But, Reid is credible? He's got a long history of lying and has currently broken the law three years in a row by not passing a budget and he's about to net a fourth year.

Nice reasoning.

Here's the funny thing: if Romney agreed to give 20 years of returns to an accounting firm with the condition that they could not leak any details save maybe the effective rate, would that satisfy you?

I suspect not. Why not? Because you don't really want the truth any more than Reid or Obama do. It's all about changing the subject from Obama's feeble performance.

I never talked about Reid and I did cite most of the circumstantial evidence already but no big deal...

If Romney wants to change the subject, release the tax returns

I don't know how you could get a neutral accountant to examine the tax returns--what's wrong with the American people?

The IRA situation in itself requires us to look at the tax returns to see the values of the assets that went into the IRA were at the time they went into the IRA. I'm no accountant but it seems to me the only way this could happen is if you put stocks into the IRA that appreciated an incredible amount. If that is so, then we need to know if the initial assets were valued correctly. I am curious as to RJ's opinion on this.

Freeman:

The IRA situation in itself requires us to look at the tax returns to see the values of the assets that went into the IRA were at the time they went into the IRA. I'm no accountant but it seems to me the only way this could happen is if you put stocks into the IRA that appreciated an incredible amount. If that is so, then we need to know if the initial assets were valued correctly. I am curious as to RJ's opinion on this.

You can rollover contributions to pensions of various sorts into IRAs. Pension balances can be substantial because they are not limited to $6,000 per year. Often they are limited to 20% of profits, which may have been substantial when Romney was at Bain. He may also have had profit sharing from various Bain investments. When you separate from service (e.g. when Romney left Bain), you can rollover the pension to an IRA. So, it is conceivable that these large pension balances are legit.

To get the pension amounts into Roth IRAs, one has to take current income. That would be shown on the income tax returns. How he valued these IRAs, and whether he did so reasonably would be interesting. As you wrote, the real timing of the appreciation of retirement assets will be a focus, whether they are in Roth IRAs, regular IRAs, or something else.

Thanks for the expert opinion, RJ.

freeman you missed one very important piece of circumstantial evidence. When Mitt says he relased his 2010 tax returns he's fibbing.

Romney released his 2010 tax return in January of this year, a document that first informed voters about the existence of his Swiss bank account and financial activities in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. But people who own foreign bank accounts are required to file a separate document with the IRS that provides additional details on such overseas bank holdings, and Romney has not released that form to the public.
The Romney campaign did not respond to a request to view the document.
Tax experts say it is almost certain that Romney did file the form, known as a Report on Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts, or "FBAR" in accountant slang. The penalty for not filing an FBAR can be severe, and the IRS would have expected to receive the form since Romney listed the Swiss bank account on his tax return. Listing the account on his tax return and then failing to file the subsequent FBAR would have been asking for a hefty fine, and would probably have heightened IRS scrutiny of prior tax filings

http://www.stripersonline.com/t/856051/ ... incomplete

There are two other reasons Mitt may not want to release information. One is that if he particiapted in the IRA amnesty program, its confirmation that for a period of time he illegally avoided paying taxes on his offshore accounts. The other is that in 2006 he owned 1.5 million dollars worth of shares in the Iranian Oil Company.

In Romney's Release of his incomplete 2010 Tax Returns, Mitt Romney forgot to mention his $1.5 Million Dollars of Iran Oil investments in that were reported in his 2006 Financial Disclosure Forms.
Did Romney sell his Iran Oil stocks or did he divert them to another shell company, who knows at this point what he did. If Romney did sell his investments in Iran Oil supply corporations, when did he sell them?

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/07/2 ... -To-Israel
If you doubt the source because its Kos, and I'd understand that, please follow the link for the document source:
http://www.opensecrets.org/pfds/candloo ... =N00000286

Maybe he did pay all the taxes he was suppossed to and maybe he's just ashamed of some of the investments he's made ? Chinese and Russian state companies investing in Iran?

Instead of making vague claims, Reid should be asking directly whether or not Mitt participated in the IRA Amnesty program.
Or what Romney did with his investments in Iran?
His current claim of Mitt paying no taxes is plainly wrong since Mitt paid sales taxes... Can't avoid those any way can you?
Every time Mitt responds, and even Hannity asks him questions about his tax returns, the press will return to Harry sp maybe Harry is putting a new piece of information out every time, just to keep the story fresh for the press....
Still, there's a lot of smoke .... and Mitt can't just blow it away without releasing his tax results.

Ricky:

When Mitt says he relased his 2010 tax returns he's fibbing.

Ricky, you are the one that is fibbing.The Form TD F 90-22.1 is not considered part of the income tax return.

It does seem reasonable to conclude that Romney has something to hide as regards his tax returns. It's probably not anything illegal or flagrantly immoral, but one suspects that the true extent of his holdings in offshore tax havens is something he's unlikely to want to reveal.

I don't really buy this idea that since he's been a Presidential candidate for so long he's bound to be clean either. Romney has displayed a remarkable inability to comprehend how the ordinary guy relates to his ostentatious wealth throughout this campaign, so it's easy to conceive of him having given no thought to onshoring his wealth and paying the same taxes as everybody else until very late in the day. Bear in mind also that up until 2009 it wasn't even an issue. It was only once the banks went under and mass public resentment against the financial class sprung up that people started to make great play about the morality of sequestering your funds in offshore tax havens.

ray

The Form TD F 90-22.1 is not considered part of the income tax return.

http://www.irs.gov/businesses/article/0 ... 86,00.html

Walks like a duck, talks like a duck, and hangs around with other ducks.
The form is required by the IRS, at the time of filing, and now an attendent form is also required to detail income that is definitiely part of the filing.
Parsing like this, and the similarly vague Romney responses "I paid taxes . A lot of taxes". (Note he doesn't say Federal income tax in his reply...) aren't going to deflect from the central theme of transparency.

Its interesting that the republican leaders now accusing Harry reid of being a big fat liar, didn't step forward to similarly chastise the blowhard Trump for his nonsense on the Obama Birth certificate". . (I I have an investigator in Hawaii, I have sources......."
That was after Obama had proven to the authorities that matter that he was qualified as a citizen to run for the office .... Somehow he had to go above and beyond the legal requirements and respond to the indiginity of the blowhard.
Harry is, I grant you, on the same level as Trump, with his "investigators" and "sources" . Unless his suppossed source does surface. (Which he probably won't.)
But based upon the precedent set on the debate of providing transparency on things like birth certificates.... republicans haven't a leg to stand on... Which is why Reid is willing to sink to the level he has.... If republicans have made it clear, through precedence, that there are no rules in a knife fight...he'll accede to their wishes and play dirty. And if the question is, "Can Liberals sink any lower? " I guess the answer is probably not. But then its also, "So What"?
Vitriol in the public discourse is common. And tactics like reids have been played by the republicans.
Even on each other as Romneys ads in the primaries confirm...

The public fully expects Mitt to comply. His inability to do so by now demonstrates a lack of leadership and character. And will continue to do so...
For Mitt to win, the election has to centre on the economy and only the economy. (And the economy has to stop recovering...) But it won't be unless he is able to end the debate about his unwillingness to be transparent. And then he will have to withstand the criticism of whatever is in those filings... (including his 90-22 and the 8938...) Why he didn't get it out of the way early, speaks to the question about what is in the returns that he can't let the public see....

I'm interested ray. As a major supporter of Israel, how do you feel about Romney having invested in state owned iranian oil supply companies?

Walks like a duck, talks like a duck, and hangs around with other ducks.
The form is required by the IRS, at the time of filing, and now an attendent form is also required to detail income that is definitiely part of the filing.

The form is not sent to the IRS. It does not report income. I would guess that none of the other candidates have released this form. My recollection is that you provide bank account numbers on the form, which should not be public info.

ray

The form is not sent to the IRS.

On the IRS website it says of the 8938

"File with income tax return pursuant to instructions for filing the return

On the IRS website it says of the 90-22 Mail to:
Department of the Treasury
Post Office Box 32621
Detroit, MI 48232-0621
For express mail to:
IRS Enterprise Computing Center
ATTN: CTR Operations
Mailroom, 4th Floor
985 Michigan Avenue
Detroit, MI 48226

It does not report income.

Both report assets. If asset values change from year to year .... that would indicate income or additional investment...
Maximum value of specified foreign financial assets, which include financial accounts with foreign financial institutions and certain other foreign non-account investment assets
Maximum value of financial accounts maintained by a financial institution physically located in a foreign country

ray

My recollection is that you provide bank account numbers on the form, which should not be public info.

And they would be redacted.

RickyP has accused Romney of a truly nasty thing. It didn't pass the smell test so I decided to dig deeply.

rickyp (bolding added) wrote:...in 2006 he [Romney] owned 1.5 million dollars worth of shares in the Iranian Oil Company.
...
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/07/2 ... -To-Israel
If you doubt the source because its Kos, and I'd understand that, please follow the link for the document source:
http://www.opensecrets.org/pfds/candloo ... =N00000286

Wow. What kind of a-hat Governor of a US State goes and buys so much stock in a company run by sworn enemies of America? (SMELL TEST!) I read the Kos bit then followed to Opensecrets then actually looked at the PDFs of Romney filings. Romney owned ZERO "shares in the Iranian Oil Company." What he owned (but had already sold) were (a few) shares in a Russian company that had some interest in Iran, and in one or two mutual funds that within their portfolios held some shares of a Chinese oil company that in turn had some interests in Iran.

KOS lists four Romney investments that tie into Iran. Let's look at each:

1) Company: Lukoil. Romney's holding*: less than $1,000 (and sold prior to date of filing). The connection to Iran: "Lukoil hopes to sign a development deal for Iran's Azar oilfield."

2) Company: Lukoil (again) Romney's holding*: less than $1,000 (again) (and sold prior to date of filing). The connection to Iran: "Lukoil bought 25 percent of Norsk Hydro's 100 percent stake in developing the Anaran oil block in Iran."

3) Company: CNOOC. Romney's holding (see pg. 27): this is one of roughly forty stocks held within a portfolio of a mutual fund in which Romney has an unknown amount over $1 million invested. The connection to Iran: "The Iranian government and China's biggest offshore oil producer, CNOOC Ltd. have signed a $16-Billion natural gas deal. The deal would cover the development of Iran's northern Pars Gas Field."

4) Company: Sinopec. Romney's holding: I looked through all 36 pages - hundreds of equities - and could find no listing. Maybe I missed it. The connection to Iran: "The Islamic nation [Iran] signed a $100 Billion, 25-year contract with China's Sinopec for the Production and Export of LNG of 1.3 billion cubic a day and the development of Iran's Yadavaran Oilfield.

Now if I invest in many different mutual funds I might look over the list of twenty to fifty or so companies in their portfolios, but chances are I'm not going to dig too deeply into the various deals each has entered into internationally. That would take an awful lot of googling and even then I might not find the bits Kos lists. So I discount #3. I also discount #4 because if Romney holds some Sinopec it's probably, again, as part of the portfolio within some mutual fund. What we're left with is less than $1,000 of stock in Lukoil. The amount, to Romney, is a pittance. Romney sold his interest before the filing. The company (according to Wikipedia) has operations in more than forty countries around the world. Lukoil's link to Iran was a "hope" in one case, and in the case of Anaran, has since been dropped because of sanctions on Iran (not that this is terribly relevant in any case).

So: from that basis, we somehow get to "in 2006 he [Romney] owned 1.5 million dollars worth of shares in the Iranian Oil Company." Gosh, it sounds awful, doesn't it? But it's a very, very VERY long way from the truth. RickyP should, in my opinion and for the sake of his credibility, retract the accusation.

*On page 3 of Sched. A of THIS form he starts the alphabetical listing of equity investments.