Bain Document Dump

[ClydeR]

Mitt Romney's $250 million fortune is largely a black hole: Aside from the meager and vague disclosures he has filed under federal and Massachusetts laws, and the two years of partial tax returns (one filed and another provisional) he has released, there is almost no data on precisely what his vast holdings consist of, or what vehicles he has used to escape taxes on his income. Gawker has obtained a massive cache of confidential financial documents that shed a great deal of light on those finances, and on the tax-dodging tricks available to the hyper-rich that he has used to keep his effective tax rate at roughly 13% over the last decade.

Today, we are publishing more than 950 pages of internal audits, financial statements, and private investor letters for 21 cryptically named entities in which Romney had invested—at minimum—more than $10 million as of 2011 (that number is based on the low end of ranges he has disclosed—the true number is almost certainly significantly higher). Almost all of them are affiliated with Bain Capital, the secretive private equity firm Romney co-founded in 1984 and ran until his departure in 1999 (or 2002, depending on whom you ask). Many of them are offshore funds based in the Cayman Islands. Together, they reveal the mind-numbing, maze-like, and deeply opaque complexity with which Romney has handled his wealth, the exotic tax-avoidance schemes available only to the preposterously wealthy that benefit him, the unlikely (for a right-wing religious Mormon) places that his money has ended up, and the deeply hypocritical distance between his own criticisms of Obama's fiscal approach and his money managers' embrace of those same policies. They also show that some of the investments that Romney has always described as part of his retirement package at Bain weren't made until years after he left the company.

More... (http://gawker.com/5936394)


You can do your own sleuthing here (http://gawker.com/5933641).

[Parkbandit]

Gawker (http://gawker.com/5936394/) has an interesting headline up: “Inside Mitt Romney’s Tax-Dodging Cayman Schemes (http://gawker.com/5936394/).” The gossip site also has released some 950 pages of material related to Mitt Romney’s investments, mostly having to do with Bain Capital. In Gawker’s own words: “Together, they reveal the mind-numbing, maze-like, and deeply opaque complexity with which Romney has handled his $250 million fortune.”
Most respectable publications maintain a fairly strict church/state division between the editorial side and the business side, and Gawker, a not very respectable publication, seems to do the same. Apparently, nobody thought to tell the boys on the Romney beat that Gawker Media is part of a shell company incorporated in the Cayman Islands. Gawker’s money lives in the same neighborhood as Romney’s money. Call it bipartisanship.
As John Cassidy relates in The New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2010/12/gawker-stalker-nick-denton-spotted-in-cayman-islands.html), Gawker’s finances are “organized like an international money-laundering operation.” For example:
Much of its international revenues are directed through Hungary, where [bossman Nick] Denton’s mother hails from, and where some of the firm’s techies are located. But that is only part of it. Recently, [Felix] Salmon reports, the various Gawker operations—Gawker Media LLC, Gawker Entertainment LLC, Gawker Technology LLC, Gawker Sales LLC—have been restructured to bring them under control of a shell company based in the Cayman Islands, Gawker Media Group Inc.
Why would a relatively small media outfit based in Soho choose to incorporate itself in a Caribbean locale long favored by insider dealers, drug cartels, hedge funds, and other entities with lots of cash they don’t want to advertise? The question virtually answers itself, but for those unversed in the intricacies of international tax avoidance Salmon spells it out: “The result is a company where 130 U.S. employees eat up the lion’s share of the the U.S. revenues, resulting in little if any taxable income, while the international income, the franchise value of the brands, and the value of the technology all stays permanently overseas, untouched by the I.R.S.”

So we have evil offshoring — exploiting those poor marginalized Hungarian nerds — baroque tax-minimizing schemes, assets that will not be repatriated because of U.S. taxes, and that favorite sin of the Left: hypocrisy. In my mind, hypocrisy is a lesser sin than stupidity, and it is sort of stupid to write up a breathless account about Romney’s doing the precise same thing your company does. Incidentally, there is nothing in the Gawker report or the accompanying documents suggesting that Romney or Bain did anything improper. And neither did Gawker, for that matter: U.S. tax practices create very powerful incentives to pursue avoidance strategies. Gawker’s owners apparently know that, even if its writers lack the guts or the intellectual capability to acknowledge as much.
We eagerly await the next Gawker editorial on the need for corporate-tax reform.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/314853/gawker-and-bain-and-caymans-kevin-d-williamson

lulz

[ClydeR]

From a tax expert who reviewed the Bain docs..


Bottom line: Mitt Romney has not paid all the taxes required under law.

More... (http://victorfleischer.com/archives/306)

[Parkbandit]

From a tax expert who reviewed the Bain docs..

Well, I guess the IRS has some 'splainin to do

[Liagala]

Well, I guess the IRS has some 'splainin to do
I heard the IRS audits everyone's return every year, so if anyone does anything fishy they'll catch it immediately.

[Parkbandit]

I heard the IRS audits everyone's return every year, so if anyone does anything fishy they'll catch it immediately.

You don't believe that the IRS had a team of auditors on Romney's tax returns for the past 10 years?

[Liagala]

You don't believe that the IRS had a team of auditors on Romney's tax returns for the past 10 years?
I neither know nor care what the IRS has done or not done about Romney's tax returns for the past 10 years. I'm mildly curious as to what said returns contain, but that's about as far as it goes.

[Latrinsorm]

I am a law abiding citizen, so I have always paid my taxes and honestly don't know: would it be a matter of public record if fmr. Governor Romney were (for instance) a year behind on his taxes? Would he be arrested or fined? You hear about athletes all the time who only get in trouble after they haven't paid income taxes in 12 years or whatever.

[ClydeR]

I am a law abiding citizen, so I have always paid my taxes and honestly don't know: would it be a matter of public record if fmr. Governor Romney were (for instance) a year behind on his taxes? Would he be arrested or fined? You hear about athletes all the time who only get in trouble after they haven't paid income taxes in 12 years or whatever.

It would be a matter of public record if he was charged with a crime. As long as he paid his taxes and did not engage in overt fraud, then it would be private. Even some tax crimes are not prosecuted as crimes. Just to pick a purely hypothetical example, the list of people who failed to report earnings from their Swiss bank accounts and settled under the FBAR amnesty program in 2009 (http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=210027,00.html), which I've written about before, is not public because the IRS did not prosecute them criminally. You'd have to see Certain People's tax records from 2009, which Certain People are keeping secret, to know that Certain People had illegally hidden Swiss bank accounts from the IRS. Those who failed to take advantage of the amensty program wound up on a public list (http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=110092,00.html).

And while we're talking about Swiss bank accounts, every remembers, I'm sure, that Romney failed to disclose his Swiss bank account on his earlier campaign finance filings, and he later amended them to report it. He did disclose the Swiss bank account on his tax return -- his 2010 tax return, that is.

[Latrinsorm]

Steve Kerr, how could you?!?

[Parkbandit]

I am a law abiding citizen, so I have always paid my taxes and honestly don't know: would it be a matter of public record if fmr. Governor Romney were (for instance) a year behind on his taxes? Would he be arrested or fined? You hear about athletes all the time who only get in trouble after they haven't paid income taxes in 12 years or whatever.

You say you always paid your taxes.. but you could be lying. Until you actually release your personal income tax statements on this forum, I don't think you are in any position to pass judgment on anyone.

[4a6c1]

I want to see his tax returns I think it would be telling. Romneys, not Latrins. LOL.......