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$9 Million is Missing from Romney’s 2011 Return
[Quote]:
So let’s lay this out:
- In 2010, Romney paid taxes on $21.58 million.
- In January, 2012, Romney estimated that he would pay taxes on $22.7 million.
- In September, 2012, Romney disclosed that he paid taxes on $13.7 million.
This is the businessman. This is the CEO of the Republican party. This is the poster boy for fiscal responsibility and conservative budget ideas. How did he overestimate his own taxes by $9 million?
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My guess/bet is that he hid that $9M offshore, or did something dodgy with it so he did not have to declare it, such as using it to offset “losses”…
There are financial penalties if you don’t withhold enough (not to mention the political fall-out when you are a candidate). It pays to be conservative. The other option is to pay an accounting firm to duplicate the 379-page tax return in detail for each estimated tax payment, but that isn’t totally accurate as you won’t have all of the foreign records in time.
It’s standard practice to make preliminary tax payments during the year based on last year’s tax return. Romney’s January estimate may well have been a simple “roughly the same as last year” guess.
Isn’t a large part of Romney’s income from investments started during his Bain years, but which he no longer has any control over? Why shouldn’t there be large variation in that income from year to year, and in a year when Romney is focused on running for President, might he be leaving it to his accountant to pay attention to the income?
Given that this guy reduced his charitable giving deductions to make his tax rate look more acceptable, I’m thinking it’s really unlikely that he’s going to muck around with hiding $9 million in income when he knows there are spotlights on his tax returns. He’s not that stupid.