July 17, 2012 by David K. Sutton
Tax Return Debacle: So What Is Mitt Romney Hiding Anyway?
Steve Kornacki writes in Salon, “Can Mitt hide his taxes forever?” Only time will tell, but so far this issue isn’t going away as the media is buzzing and the Obama campaign continues to pound Romney to a pulp in its latest ad titled “Makes You Wonder.”
Kornacki says, “Romney and his team haven’t helped themselves by offering bogus precedents for a presidential candidate releasing so little tax information, a response that has only encouraged the media to push harder. A measure of how big the story has become to the nonpartisan press came last night, when CNN’s Erin Burnett abandoned her neutral pose and excoriated Romney for not coming clean.” He also points out the growing list of conservatives calling for Romney to release more tax returns which includes Brit Hume, Haley Barbour, George Will, Bill Kristol and Robert Bentley.
Over at The Week, they list 6 possible theories for why Mitt Romney won’t release anymore tax returns. Some mundane possibilities are that Romney is being arrogant or he thinks it will further distract from his core message of Obama and the economy. More provocative theories are that Romney’s income might have been extremely high in one or more years or his effective tax rate was at or near zero in one or more years. The most provocative theory is that Romney does truly have something bad to hide, and they speculate that maybe it could be related to an IRS program in 2009 that granted amnesty for fraudulent offshore investments.
To continue to take such a huge and sustained political hit, it does indeed make you wonder.
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