So what's the reason, Denny? Come on... tell us why he's not releasing them, other then A) there's the smoking gun in there that John McCain found and then picked Sarah Palin, or B) he is such an out-of-touch prick that he honestly wonders why anyone wants to know what he does with his money.
I already answered. Team Obama wants to scour through them to find anything they can to use as a diversion from Obama's record. The strategy is to NOT let it be a referendum on Obama. Get it? So how do you feel about GE paying $0 in taxes, and it's CEO, Jefrey Immelt, being the head of Obama's "jobs council"? Other than the jobs council not being very effective.
I answered the question in no uncertain terms. I think you're talking about your non-answer to my question about Immelt.
Scouring his tax returns is par for the course. What is nonstandard is to hide them, not to scour them. He's obviously hiding bad behavior, and naturally, Obama's campaign is calling attention to that. P.S. Denny, I think you're a space fan like me. NASA TV landing coverage starts in 1 hour, 8:30 PDT.
He released one and people made a stink out of perfectly legitimate things like offshore accounts. When John Kerry ran for president, he didn't release his wife's tax returns (she was worth 2x to 4x more than Romney).
John Kerry's wife wasn't running for president. And offshore accounts are perfectly legitimate (for someone with the means to have them). What he does with them may not be. The tax forms will show that.
The offshore accounts are described here: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/20/us-usa-tax-romney-idUSBRE86J1BP20120720 The swiss bank account was his wife's account, not his. Kerry's wife, goose, gander, and all that. I assure you that if Romney had done something like not paying taxes by using some offshore account, we'd already know about it. The one return for 2010 would show he paid taxes on those accounts or not. I'd also like you to produce any kind of law that says a candidate must provide his tax returns. From what I've read, McCain produced just two, and Romney intends to do likewise.
False. His income was taxed when it was earned as income. He invested the money post-tax, and whether he made money or not, it is taxed at the same rate. It's secondary taxation. Learn the game, then post. I'll add that a part of the Dem platform is to tax 401k money for the common folk, since currently, that money isn't taxed for income prior to being placed into a 401k account. As usual, you don't know what you're talking about, Denny.
Q His tax records have been released. You're correct on that one. Obama hasn't released 10 years of his tax records, fwiw. For some reason, that only applies to Romney. Must be a Rezko/tax deal?
My point is that the money invested has already been taxed via the income tax. It makes sense to have a flat rate on secondary income made off of already taxed money, which is why it's called the capital gains tax. Now, one can argue about how he invested wisely to get fantastic returns, but that's a completely different issue. Are you saying you're in favor of a progressive tax rate for investments, as in the more of a % you make on investments you make, the higher the tax rate? If so, I understand that argument, if not necessarily agreeing with it.
http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc409.html When a capital asset is sold, the difference between the basis in the asset and the amount it is sold for is a capital gain or a capital loss. Generally an asset's basis is its cost, ...
Yeah, you just proved my point. Thanks. There is a flat rate for capital gains made on invested money. That's my entire point. Thanks for agreeing with me.
You're also taxed on capital gains for assets not sold, by the way. I'm not sure anybody here actually has had to pay those taxes, though. Making money on paper isn't "free", regardless of if you sell those assets.
Those are very different questions than whether he was taxed twice. Some people would look at his having enough money to have big capital gains income and to only pay 15% while most not-so-rich people pay 30% or even 50% in tax as unfair. I look at having that kind of money as a responsibility, and the 15% long term capital gains tax rate encourages investment and long-term investment. It's part of the responsibility to invest. It gets quite muddled, though. A guy can buy 100 shares of stock at $50 and see the stock fall to $10, he buys another 100 shares at $10 and it goes to $100. He decides to sell 1/2 the stock so he sells the shares he bought at $50 to minimize his capital gain. Or the guy could have sold his shares at $10 and taken a $40 loss and next year used that loss against $40 in gains to effectively pay no tax at all for that tax year. So it's quite possible that Romney had huge losses in 2008 and paid no taxes on his capital gains for the 2009 tax year. In fact, it is quite likely he had those losses, if he sold any stock at all. Capital losses can be used in any subsequent year against capital gains.
It's actually a very simple taxation, at least in terms of what is being taxed, and if the original investment had been income taxed, and why. Not sure why you're continuing to dig a hole, other than that's kind of what you do when you're shown to be clueless.
When you sell an asset (house, business, or investment), you pay tax on its gain in value while you owned it, but not on its basis (the amount you spent on it). How is this double taxation?
It's really not that hard to be respectful, even if you disagree with someone. Then again, it's a pattern that's been around forever and it sure is tiresome. All I can say is that Denny's patience is amazing. First off, he has essentially NEVER paid tax at the rates most of us pay. He's smack dab in the middle of the hedge fund loophole, which means the vast majority of the money he's made has been taxed at the long term capital gains rate. Rather than receiving salary that would be taxed at usual tax rates, the hedge fund crowd gets the bulk of their compensation in the form of capital gains...usually long term capital gains...so that their effective tax rate is MUCH lower than someone receiving a paycheck. Usually, when people talk about double tax, they are talking about an investor in a profitable company. The profitable company is successful and pays tax on its profits (tax #1). Profitable company then distributes money to investor in the form of dividend and investor pay tax on the dividend (tax #2). In other words, the profits generated by company get taxed twice along the way. That usually what is meant by double tax, as far as I know. In Romney's case, where virtually all of his income is LTCG, he only pays tax when shares are sold at a profit and he's taxed only on the profit. If he turns around and invests those profits in another company, he'd pay tax (or claim loss) when he sells those shares. The cost basis would be adjusted and he is not re-taxed on profits he made from the previous investment. FWIW, I 've got to think Romney probably paid tax even in poor investment years. I think there are probably other things he'd like to keep quiet...and that's why he's not disclosed his tax returns and why the dems are so fired up to make it happen. Not sure if it's been mentioned before, but apparently it's been disclosed that the Romneys claimed tax deductions on Ann Romney's dressage/"horse ballet" expenses of approx. $70k. That's exactly the sort of thing Romney would've like to keep quiet and I'm guessing there are similar expenses that haven't been disclosed yet.
