According to Victor Fleischer, a tax law professor at the University of Colorado, Mitt Romney cheated on his taxes:
Gawker today posted some Bain documents today showing that Bain, like many other PE firms, had engaged in this practice of converting management fees into capital gain. Unlike carried interest, which is unseemly but perfectly legal, Bain’s management fee conversions are not legal. If challenged in court, Bain would lose. The Bain partners, in my opinion, misreported their income if they reported these converted fees as capital gain instead of ordinary income.
[…] Bottom line: Mitt Romney has not paid all the taxes required under law.
This has gotten some media attention, but am I the only one who thinks that there’s a bit of butthurt, and therefore diminished MSM attention, because Gawker scooped them all? Or, as the Times put it, some documents were “published online”.
hep kitty
Another shooting, 2 reported dead, including shooter – Empire State Building
Villago Delenda Est
You’d think the butt kicking delivered by the WaPo back in the 70’s to the Grey Lady might have made some sort of lasting impression, but no.
They’re on their ass, again. Too busy fluffing talentless hacks like BoBo and ChunkyBoBo.
Burn it down. Burn it down to the ground. It’s worthless, it’s garbage.
Litlebritdifrnt
I think what is more interesting is that the elitists at Fortune Magazine apparently saw the documents months ago and decided that we little people shouldn’t be able to see them.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Yes, I think it will matter. Not that it will cause a lawsuit or even a followup by the IRS, at least until after the election. But it’s just one more thing, one more piece of “the rich get to play by different rules”.
ETA: Instead of “sigh – will anyone care”, you should take a page from ABL’s book and get righteously pissed that Romney has been doing this crap.
the Conster
It’s just all drip drip drip with the Romney tax stories. It doesn’t matter to anyone not of the media which media outlet got there first – by the time November comes everyone will understand that the guy is a tax cheat who’s advocating lower taxes for people who barely pay any. Whether that will make any difference to the low infos is anyone’s guess, but Obama should really hammer home the unfairness of it – everyone understands that.
Punchy
Nobody will care, because Honey Boo Boo has a new TV show and there’s a weak tropical storm 500 miles away that may bring a few inches of rain and enough wind to fly a kite.
jwb
I give the media a couple of more days to get through the documents and write up their stories. These are complex documents and because of the way they were dropped, additional reporting will need to be done to give the reporter a distinctive angle. But from what I’ve been reading on Twitter there is enough of interest here to generate stories.
JenJen
I don’t expect this story to get a lot of mainstream play, because, haven’t you heard? Next week is Mitt Romney Love Fest Week where the media gives him a supreme makeover into an awesome, capable and likable guy so that they can get the horserace they so desire.
I don’t think it’s going to work, of course, but that seems to be the plan from the coverage I’ve watched the last few days.
Valdivia
I don’t want to be paranoid but given that Romney is touting Bain again in an op-ed I hope there’s no Rather like bs in that doc trove.
Carl Nyberg
I noticed it was Gawker as opposed to NYT and WP too.
But, here’s what I gleaned when the story about Mark Kirk’s fabricated history of military service and awards broke: the Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times could have broken these stories for about a decade. They chose to protect Kirk rather than investigate claims that sounded pretty hinky. Why would the Navy bypass every active duty intelligence officer and make a reservist, Mark Kirk, the intelligence officer of the year? And why was there no other examples of “Navy intelligence officer of the year” when one did a Google search?
So, if I was sitting on information about Romney that other people had access to, I would pretty much assume that the NYT and WP already had a bite at the apple and was actively protecting Romney. If the info is out there and accessible and it hasn’t been covered by the NYT or WP, what other assumption is there to make?
But maybe the Obama oppo team–they are fucking ninja assassins, have I mentioned this–decided to release to Gawker for some specific reason.
I could see NYT and WP saying they wanted to have experts look over the stuff and then quote the experts. And Obama’s ninja assassins decided they wanted the whole thing dumped.
Carl Nyberg
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Another anecdote to add to the argument, “Our democracy sucks because our corporate media sucks. It’s mostly PR for the ruling class.”
Ben Franklin
engaged in this practice of converting management fees into capital gain.
Heh. This dovetails nicely with the opinion that he doesn’t want his tithing revealed.
It will reveal he donates operational co’s, then takes a hefty management fee. for his astute business acumen. :)
GregB
Everyone remain calm. This was not a terrorist act by some foreign infiltrator trying to disrupt the fabric of American life. It was just a run of the mill disgruntled citizen and it’s just good old American workplace violence.
Nothing to be alarmed about.
karen
Sorry to be OT but it’s important: there was a shooting near the Empire State building. 2 people dead. One gunman, one is a victim. 4 people shot, 10 people injured: (oops didn’t see the first comment, sorry to be repetitive)
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08/24/13455394-several-people-shot-outside-empire-state-building?lite
This is happening way too often.
lacp
And you’re taking the word of a professor? Everybody knows that all academics (except the few righteous such as VeeDee Hanson and Instahack) have a LIEbrul bias.
R. Porrofatto
This is why Romney/Ryan need to be elected so they can enact a massive cut to income taxes of the very wealthy, besides eliminating all taxes on capital gains and dividends. This way, those poor, desperate Bain executives won’t have to resort to committing tax crimes to make their millions. Just ordinary crimes.
TheOtherWA
@Carl Nyberg: Bypass the conservative media filter and get the info out there. I like your theory. Not sure Team Obama was behind this, but I salute whoever did it.
Considering the amount of info and the knowledge needed to properly analyze them, we may not get the really juicy stuff until after the republic convention. As long as it’s out by early October, it’ll be cool.
lacp
BTW, short answer to this post’s title: “No.”
SatanicPanic
@karen:
This.
J.D. Rhoades
I agree: no. It’s too complicated.
NCSteve
@the Conster: I think people will understand “cheating on your taxes” = “the thing they finally Al Capone for doing.”
Now in fact, there are several shades of grey between “I’m a politician so I’m not even going to take deductions I’m entitled to because looking like a super-good citizen is more important to me than money” white and “I sentence you to federal pound-you-in-the-ass prison” black. The latter requires actual knowledge that you’re cheating, i.e. no good faith basis for believing what you’re doing might just possibly be legal in the form of a semi-credible opinion letter signed by a tax lawyer.
But given that the GOP is the party that has done its best to convince people that “top marginal rate” = “rate you pay on 100% of your income,” they’re not exactly in a position to make the case that tax cheating should be a nuanced discussion.
mainmati
@Villago Delenda Est: Well, at least you’re living up to your blog handle. I can think of far worse newspapers than the NYT and they put out a lot of good product, some of their OpEd writers notwithstanding (and WaPo is far worse in that department). Gawker did a great service and let’s leave it at that.
Violet
This needs to be a rotating tag here. And, every time someone links to a New York Times article, they could add the disclaimer “some article published online”.
hep kitty
If all the people at the Empire State building had been armed …
meh, it’s got to where it’s not even funny anymore
RareSanity
I don’t think that it’s butthurt about possibly getting scoped…
I think that this kind of thing has always happened. It’s just that in the internet age, these major media outlets no longer hold the position of the sole gatekeeper’s of information, and they don’t like it. The role of gatekeeper comes with power and prestige. When you are not the gatekeeper, the man behind the curtain that is your credibility, is exposed.
There, my friend, lies the butthurt.
That Fortune magazine writer showed it yesterday…both the arrogance and the butthurt, in one convenient blog post. He may as well have written:
“I already saw those documents and decided there was nothing there, you idiots. Now stop questioning my judgement as to what is, and what is not, important enough to write articles about! I’ve already made the call.”
David Hunt
George W. Bush did virtually the same thing with the deal that got the Texas Rangers their stadium (recorded a bunch of regular income as capital gains income) thereby stiffing the Federal Government for a bunch of taxes. Nobody even remembers it. Just yesterday I was thinking that concrete proof of tax fraud would severely hurt Romney’s chances of election, but today I’m thinking that it appears to be a standard Republican method of enhancing their income. To clarify, Romney’s taxes are so complicated that the average voter is not going to be able to understand his fraud, so it won’t hurt his chances.
Violet
The documents were only just published yesterday. It takes time for this kind of thing to ramp up. People will keep looking, digging. He won’t release his returns and stop the questions, so the questions will just keep coming.
kindness
I don’t care who published it.
I want the IRS to look into this and take every single Galtian who illegally profited from this to court.
Sue the bastards. Oh, and defeat Romney this fall.
TK421
It would certainly be a shame if an important news story came across the transom and people didn’t care.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/us-should-hand-over-footage-of-drone-strikes-or-face-un-inquiry-8061504.html
MikeJ
@David Hunt: The story on Bush was that he was a draft dodger, not a tax cheat. It’s too complicated to have more than one idea at a time.
Happily, the story on Romney is already that the way he got to be super rich was through shady dealing that hurt companies, hurt workers, and cheated the government.
Roger Moore
@Valdivia:
Of course he is. It’s fine to talk about any topic Romney brings up, but only to discuss his preferred talking points. So discussing Bain is fine, so long as you restrict the discussion to what a great business leader Romney was while he was working there and how important job creators like Romney are to our country. Only departure from the approved Romney line is unacceptable.
Culture of Truth
Why did the leaker give them to Gawker?
Possibly knowing they would put them all out there, which they did, rather than the NY Times, which undoubtedly would have analyzed them endlessly, and if by chance found a crime, withheld them so as not to influence the election.
Culture of Truth
“I care”
WJS
@MikeJ:
Yes, and as it reads in a lot of those documents, he did those things outside of the United States in order to avoid paying taxes.
There is something seriously wrong with a candidate for President who is not only avoiding transparency but is also conducting these complicated financial transactions overseas.
How can anyone, with a straight face, claim that Romney should be trusted with government secrets? If he were to apply for a clearance, he wouldn’t get past the financial background check or be able to explain his dealings with foreign entities. If he was held to any kind of standard, his inability to demonstrate transparency would disqualify him from being entrusted with any kind of classified information. Romney, of course, would not be treated like a lowly government worker, but still.
amk
@Culture of Truth: Bingo. The msm’s pathetic conduct in the past few weeks proves it.
Maude
@karen:
This is awful. People just going about their business and this guy starts shooting. He couldn’t just kill himself, oh, no. Evil POS.
@Culture of Truth: I don’t think they were leaked. Fortune had them before this.
Roger Moore
@WJS:
Hey, you’re being totally unfair to Romney. He isn’t doing those things overseas to avoid taxes. He’s doing them overseas for the convenience of his priest murdering, nun raping, death squad organizing foreign partners.
amk
@Maude: And they held on to it and buried it. Hence this leak gawker.
Jay in Oregon
@JenJen:
Does that mean that Ann Romney will get up on stage and unzip Mitt so that we can all see that he’s not really stiff?
(Thankyew, thankyew… the brain bleach is on aisle 4…)
Jay in Oregon
@Carl Nyberg:
Who among us has NOT converted management fees into capital gains for the purposes of dodging taxes? It’s a victimless crime!
quannlace
And everyone, from the networks to the 24 hour stations, even NPR are going on ‘and we’ll be there, to cover all the news and the action!”
Action? What do they expect? Romney’s going to parachute in like Queen Elizabeth at the Olympics?
Dennis SGMM
It would be good to reflect on the fact that the NYT held off breaking the NSA warrentless surveillance story because “it might influence” the 2004 election.
Litlebritdifrnt
@amk:
That is what pisses me off the most, THEY decided that us peons were not worthy of seeing it, THEY decided that us peons didn’t need to know, THEY decided that us peons were just not smart enough to interpret the information for ourselves. Seriously, that really pisses me off.
Frankensteinbeck
@quannlace:
It will be glorious. There is nothing we want more than close attention paid to Romney. The man got through one single debate without making an ass of himself, and then made an ass of himself afterwards because he got through that debate okay. He is a gaffe MACHINE. He will do something horribly wrong that will yank the news cycle back to what a bad person he is, and it will be something we never even saw coming.
EDIT – Come to think of it, Mitt Romney is the perfect candidate for the current Republican Party: Not smart enough to maintain the lies that built the Reagan Revolution.
Chris
@WJS:
This.
Obama got years and years of shit for supposedly being born overseas, but Mittens gets to conduct all his business there to avoid paying his due to society and it’s all good.
Cassidy
@Culture of Truth: Gawker has a younger demographic?
Culture of Truth
well somebody leaked something, n’est pas?
Culture of Truth
I don’t tihnk demographics is the issue.
For all we know the leaker has been shopping these docs around only to get the cold shoulder from Big Media. Recall the Times sat on extensive illegal wiretapping – a newsworthy thing, some would say – so as not to spoil Bush’s chances to wreck America for good in 2005-2009.
The Moar You Know
@David Hunt: Americans admire tax cheats. Part of the culture. I don’t think the tax thing has hurt Romney at all. I think being a rich asshole who acts exactly like a rich asshole is hurting Romney, and will continue to do so.
Speaking of rich assholes, I’m pissed that the networks have dropped Ann Romney’s speech. That woman is a gold mine for Democrats.
wenchacha
Saw this a day or so ago.
And now it’s updated.
artem1s
If this analysis and the source material is accurate* then it will be truly interesting to see if team Obama can spin this to their advantage. Seems to me there are way to many glibitarians who will see it as a justifiable shaft towards the feds and revenuers and everyone should pay no taxes (except for the 40/60% freeloaders who don’t pay any tax at all) blah, blah, blah…
*terrified someone is going to get Rathered over this tax thing and then the subject will off limits for the rest of the election.
Dennis
If Gawker has anything worth revealing about Bain and Romney, then why didn’t Harry Reid’s Bain-investor source tell Harry Reid about it before?
Narcissus
“And now, your local on the 8s.”
“Chance of rain, 35 percent. Chance of mass shooting, 65 percent.”
(Roppongi Panic starts playing, cue doppler radar sweep graphics, ticker-tape of death toll at bottom of screen.)
jp7505a
@David Hunt: It used to be that you were disqualified from office if caught in bed with a live boy or dead girl. I doubt that it would have any impact on those voting for the R&R ticket.
If after the events of the past 30 years seniors still think that the GOP will protect Medicare/social security or that the GOP gives a hoot about Joe Sixpack then progressives are spitting in the wind. The old cliche, no one is so deaf as he who will not hear.
As long as the economy is just limping along its going to be a very difficult campaign.
evinfuilt
@hep kitty:
Sorry, just checked with the nation. Still not time to have that discussion.
Randy P
@hep kitty: A little too close to home for me. The guy shot up the Manhattan rush hour. Huge, dense crowds. My daughter’s fiancee works in that block. She used to work there.
Believe it or not to all you New York-o-phobes, this kind of thing is not common in NYC.
It sounds like it was a workplace dispute. The guy was fired yesterday and the first victim was his boss from what I’m piecing together. Gunman is also dead after drawing in the cops.
NancyDarling
@JenJen:
I prefer to call it the Krazy Klown Koronation.
KeithinOhio
Have you Juicers noticed that these horrible shootings have been happening more frequently and seemed to be timed right after a BIG potentially damaging info has been leaked out about Robme’s finances, taxes, or Bain involvement? Something very sinister and amiss is going on in our society. Put two and two together folks. The ruling class is desperate not to see the CHAMPION OF THE PEOPLE re-elected.
cmorenc
@jwb:
The NYC shooting has provided an easy shiny object for the media that will suck all the oxygen out of attentive coverage of anything else until the start of the GOP convention on Monday. It’s eclipsed for the moment the Aiken story. The upside is that this interval gives any real journalists enough time to solidly research and present the story during the GOP convention. The downside is the risk that this story will get buried by the kerfluffle of trivial shiny objects generated during the GOP convention.
? Martin
@hep kitty: Whew! I was afraid we were going all french having a week without a mass shooting. Crisis averted!
USA! USA!
My ability to be outraged at this stuff is exhausted.
ChrisNYC
I’m more interested in the media covering Mitt’s private meeting with the man of the spastic tubes. WTF? Imagine if a Dem nominee met with a euthanasia proponent — not that it’s remotely comparable — just imagine the horror, though.
SenyorDave
Mitt is a slimy piece of shit. I know Obama has an ad talking about Mitt’s 14% rate in 2011 and how his plan will increase taxes on the middle class.
I want Obama to start talking a whole lot about:
1. Basic tax fairness. How about reviving his “Buffet” rule, that says beyond a certain threshold ($1 million?), everyone has to pay at least X% on the income (I thought it was 30%).
2. Where are Mitt’s tax returns? I want an ad barrage about this.
cmorenc
@KeithinOhio:
This is winger-level tinfoil hat conspiracy thinking. The simpler (and accurate) explanation is that: 1) years of swiss-cheese gun registration and screening, courtesy of NRA fanaticism, are coming home to roost in more frequent clusters; 2) “mad gunman” mass shootings provide a brilliantly shiny, yet easy object for the media to focus attention on. MUCH easier work for cable news reporters than wading through the complexities of Bain documents.
burnspbesq
Vic Fleischer, on his blog yesterday:
Vic Fleischer, in the NYU Law Review in 2008.
There have been no changes to the regulations under Internal Revenuc Code section 451 relating to constructive receipt, and no significant developments in the case law, between 2008 and yesterday. So what’s really going on here? Is Prof. Fleischer allowing his distaste for Romney (which well share) to color his professional judgment?
In terms of the larger conversation about tax policy, it doesn’t matter whether Romney cheated on his taxes, or took aggressive but defensible reporting positions, or was cleaner than clean. The real problem is that the system as it currently exists allows him to pay only $3 million in tax on AGI of $21.6 million in 2010. The deck is stacked in favor of people who earn (or can contrive to earn) dividends and capital gain, and against those who earn wages and Schedule C income. That’s what needs to be addressed, and the danger is that Mitt Romney becomes a shiny object that distracts us from fixing what needs to be fixed.
Amir Khalid
@KeithinOhio:
@cmorenc:
KeithinOhio, if you’re snarking, now is probably not a good time for it.
Culture of Truth
Romney Rule – pay at least 15% or is that too much too ask?
Alex S.
@Carl Nyberg:
The whole system is losing its efficiency. A market-economy only works when everyone works for his own gain. A democracy only works when everyone votes for his own self-interest. The media market only works when media companies are fighting for scoops out of self-interest. Instead, some papers choose to ‘protect the system’ instead. Some people choose to protect their tribe à la “What’s the matter with Kansas” – even if it goes against their interests.
Brachiator
@KeithinOhio:
No.
I think you are looking to manufacture a pattern, not uncovering something real or significant.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
Shocked, Shocked to discover that people who can afford to cheat on their taxes do so.
I’m more interested in Mitt’s declared residency from 1995-2002. My theory is that he ran for MA Gov illegally, and doesn’t want that to come out retroactively.
Ruckus
@The Moar You Know:
Many people around the world “admire” tax cheats.
You work and some big entity which most can’t fight at all comes and takes money from you. The problem is we never really explain why there are so many ways that rich assholes like mittens get to pay 13% when millions making millions less pay more.
It feels like a rigged game because it is.
Cassidy
@KeithinOhio: And…we’re done. Better living through chemistry, my friend. Go see a counselor.
Mark S.
Anderson Cooper is a putz. There’s no way you can watch this video and think he schools DWS. Seriously, his argument is that sitting there and not objecting to a no-exceptions Constitutional amendment on abortion is not the same as drafting one. Ok, big fucking whoop. And I’m sure Americans will be outraged that the Dems quoted an LA Times article out of context in a fundraising letter to their supporters.
But it gave David Frum a woody, who sees it as what cable news could look like and how awesome it would be. Jesus, David, that already is what cable news is: millionaire idiots arguing over minute points that don’t have anything to do with the larger picture.
Ruckus
@Ruckus:
See burnsy at 64
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@KeithinOhio:
Conspiracies assume a level of competence in planning, organization and execution that’s not in evidence: The PTB just aren’t that clever. Best to avoid the temptation.
These shootings do always seem to happen on Fridays, however.
So much for not liking Mondays.
Mnemosyne
@Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God:
IIRC, the current Human Resources recommendation is to fire or lay people off on Fridays, not during the week, because then they have two days to cool down and re-think any violent retaliation.
I wish I were kidding, but I’m not.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@burnspbesq:
What changes would you make to fix this problem, if it were up to you?
(Serious question, not snark)
Kay (no, not that one)
I asked this question @ DKOS also:
Where did these documents come from? Who leaked them?
I ask because I still think Reid’s source was someone within Bain, someone involved in negotiation and/or preparation of Romney’s severance package. If I’m right, that person would have access to these documents and might be motivated to share them. S/he may not be able to allow him/herself to be identified, either because s/he would risk his/her livelihood, or because s/he might be in legal jeopardy for these revelations.
amk
@Mnemosyne: This guy was fired apparently a year back. So …
1badbaba3
Months after it was brought up in the Primaries, this tax thang shows no sign of getting smaller or going away.
Best campaign evah!
Romney/ Romney’s Accountants and Tax Lawyers 2012!
Steve
@burnspbesq: I feel like a lot of people don’t appreciate that there’s not a binary choice between committing tax fraud and following the law. There’s a lot of aggressive practices that simply haven’t been challenged or adjudicated yet, and some are more aggressive than others.
There are some things that are just facially ridiculous – like when GM announced a 60-day full refund program for the Volt, and some people bought it, returned it, and claimed the tax credit anyway. But if what Romney did is in the category of “a lot of people think this would be struck down if the IRS started challenging it, but they haven’t yet,” that’s garden-variety stuff in my opinion.
Zach
@SenyorDave: I’d like a series of ads featuring various celebrities sitting down with their accountant who tells them (1) what they paid in income taxes this year, (2) what they would’ve paid under Romney’s plan and (3) what they would’ve paid under Obama’s plan. Followed by a link to Obama’s tax calculator so viewers can run the calculation for their own finances. You could have a page with links to split-screen sample 1040s for all sorts of celebrities including Barack Obama and Mitt Romney showing how the different items would change under different plans.
Commish
I think the relative lack of media attention is more because the big media owners, as well as the people who invite the peon editors to their parties in the Hamptons, use similar tax strategies.
Culture of Truth
A lot of thing are garden variety – wearing sneakers, for example, is a common human activity. But try doing that in a job interview. For CEO.
Mitt is in an extended job interview and he keeps showing up late wearing clown pants and telling the company to stop worrying about petty things and give him the job.
Zach
And, of course, here’s Romney today sort of blowing a hole in his argument that his investments were headquartered in tax havens simply to appeal to foreign investors:
Regarding Romney as a CEO/President. Isn’t the whole point about being CEO knowing how to put the right people in the right places? Promote and fire aggressively to reshape an organization? As far as I can tell, the only fireable offense in the Romney campaign is being gay. Dan Senor was a total screwup before he joined the campaign and has continued to screw up since coming on. Then there’s etch-a-sketch-guy, dude who cussed out the press when his only job is to coddle them, etc.
Steve
@Culture of Truth: Well let me put it this way. People probably should resent the vast number of tax-avoidance strategies available to the rich, both the ones that are perfectly legal and the ones that occupy a grey area. I wouldn’t tell anyone how they ought to feel. But one also shouldn’t confuse this type of aggressive, yet common, tax strategy with outright fraud such as failing to disclose your Swiss bank account.
burnspbesq
@Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God:
How weedy do you want me to get?
Seriously, the first step is to get rid of preferential treatment for capital gains and qualified dividends.
Step two: raise rates, across the board, for every category of taxpayer.
Step three: more enforcement. There’s no reason for a trillion dollars a year of unreported income to go unreported.
Step four: a 55 percent estate tax, with a $1.5 million exemption equivalend.
Step five: get serious about enforcing the gift tax.
Step six: either get serious about enforcing transfer pricing and Code Section 367(d), or give up on the arm’s-length standard and do some sort of apportionment for cross-border related-party transactions.
Step seven: accept Mike Durst’s idea about taxing income from IP to the developer, rather than to some passive offshore player that funded the development. But do it in a way that doesn’t kill off cost-sharing altogether.
gene108
@jp7505a:
I believe the feeling is the GOP will make sure the negro, Mexicans, single slut mothers and other moochers, will be sufficiently put in their place by GOP policies.
The old folks, who vote for the GOP, are often very wealthy and can do just fine without Social Security or Medicare and view Joe Sixpack with contempt.
Jose Padilla
@burnspbesq:
“Constructive receipt” is where you receive the income but not the cash(dividends automatically reinvested, for example). The IRS has always maintained you get taxed on constructive receipt.
That’s not what is happening here. Bain (under Romney’s direction) thinks it has the right to recharacterize ordinary income as capital gains by using the “carried interest” loophole even on its managment income.
You’re a troll. The fact that you were able to access a four-year-old law review article (typically not online), find a quote that sounds inconsistent, and do so on short notice suggests you’re associated with the Romney campaign
Heliopause
It doesn’t need to be made a big deal of, just keep it on a low simmer in the public consciousness and it will do its job. People already think that Romney “legally cheats,” if you will, this just reaffirms it.
burnspbesq
@Jose Padilla:
You have no fucking idea what you’re talking about.
The issue is whether converting the “fee” portion of the management fee into additional carried interest before it has accrued results in constructive receipt. There is ample room for reasoned disagreement on that point.
Fleischer linked to his 2008 NYULR article at the end of his blog post, which you would have known if you had actually read it.
Who’s the troll?
You’re going to have to up your game considerably if you want to play here. This is the Rucker Park of blogs, and your game belongs at some elementary school playground in Massapequa.
Steve
@Jose Padilla:
Bwahahahaha!
hitchhiker
@Ben Franklin:
His astute business acumen consists of figuring out how to make boatloads of money without producing anything, and then figuring out how to take advantage of every possible loophole to avoid paying his taxes.
That’s the meme. He’s never produced anything. He’s just a really good player of a system that was rigged in his favor to begin with.
Repeat repeatedly.
KeithinOhio
@cmorenc: Exactly my point cmorenc. The MSM today is built on distraction and propoganda for the Fascist. This latest shooting will eclipse the new Bain tax revelations. Tailor made for going into Mitt’s coronation next week. GAG!!!!!
Maude
@burnspbesq:
The Romney tax story will broaden to tax laws during the general election campaign. Obama has talked about it, but MSM doesn’t like dull stories.
Frankensteinbeck
@burnspbesq:
I disagree with this part:
Mitt Romney is a object that is finally attracting attention to these issues. Humans are much better with concrete examples than abstracts. Romney is an unlikable person, a predatory businessman who destroys jobs, is incredibly rich and yet pays very little (possibly no!) taxes, and is the face of GOP tax policy. All of those things get tied together, and it is a huge blow against thirty years of the GOP successfully selling the idea that taxing the rich means taxing everybody.
Original Lee
@Mnemosyne: Some HR specialists recommend firing before a holiday, especially a three-day weekend. The Wednesday before Thanksgiving is a favorite because then the fired employee is still eligible for the end-of-year bonus in the severance check, which is supposed to take the edge off.
Haydnseek
Rmoney cheats on his taxes. And in late breaking news, the sun is hot, and water is wet…
Jose Padilla
@burnspbesq:
The original post is timed at 9:58. Your reponse is timed at 11:37. So you’re saying you read the original post, read the link, and then read and digested a 59-page Law Review article in an hour-and-a-half?
I call bullshit.
You’re also a gold-plated liar. You know there’s a huge difference between constructive receipt and the Bain tax evasion scheme. The whole point of the scheme is that the Bain partners haven’t received the money (even constructively), that’s what allows them to rewrite the rules and turn ordinary income into capital gains.
JC
Why isn’t the fact that Romney lied on his taxes, the 1st story, the only story, the main story, on every page, in every newspaper.
Half the country is about to elect someone who leveraged money to the hilt, to buy companies, just to bankrupt them later and collect fees, who HID and STASHED money in Cayman Islands, money in Swiss bank accounts, who turned his IRA into a multi-million dollar winner, and now, had cheated on his tax returns, and someone, who also, who has a simply lying plan about debt, Medicare, and Social Security?
It’s completely insane, and again, just another example of bought and paid for media.
Seriously, you want an un-american cheater to run the country?
Catsy
@Jose Padilla: Settle down, Sparky. Burnsey may indeed frequently act like a contrarian troll, but I’m pretty sure he’s not a GOP shill.
xian
@Roger Moore: it is kind of funny that he listed talking about someone’s business as a personal attack…
burnspbesq
@Jose Padilla:
You can call whatever you want. Perhaps you failed to notice that Fleischer’s NYULR article had a table of contents that, if you understand what the issue is, leads you directly to the relevant part of the article, which is less than two pages. Perhaps you committed the logical fallacy of assuming that I read as slowly, and with as little comprehension, as you.
I am amused by your feeble attempt to tell me what I know. I am equally amused by your limited understanding of the fundamental concepts at issue here. Here’s your chance to show off. Tell us all exactly why, with appropriate citations to applicable regulations, IRS administrative guidance, and case law, the conversion doesn’t work.
You are out of your depth here. Do feel free to keep demonstrating that.
AA+ Bonds
I don’t think it’s about Gawker; I think that major media outlets such as the New York Times are extremely reluctant to accept that Romney did something questionable
They will have to be forced into this – their minds reject it, because that would make Romney “like Nixon” and the American media thrives on the myth of Nixon’s singular and unique evil
AA+ Bonds
@burnspbesq:
I’ll back burns on this one (emphasis mine)
AA+ Bonds
@Alex S.:
I’d say that we won’t have a “market economy” any more when that happens, at least not one most people would recognize as such