What about Romney's retirement account?

Lee Sheppard, who's a contributing editor at the journal Tax Notes, wants to know how Romney amassed so much money in his tax-deferred retirement account.

"All we know is really that it's a big number, and we're a little bit baffled as to how it got so big," Sheppard says. ...NPR

With a retirement account estimated to be at "somewhere between $21 million and $102 million," Mitt Romney has some 'splainin to do.  How'd that account get to be so magnificent from the yearly deposits of $30,000 a year that the law allows?  USC law professor, Ed Kleinbard believes Romney "might have loaded up his retirement account with assets from his private equity firm, Bain Capital, and assigned artificially low values to those assets in order to get around the federal contribution limits."

If so, Romney would still have to pay taxes on the real value of the assets when they're withdrawn from the account. But in the meantime, the money can grow tax free. Tax Notes' Sheppard says that's an advantage most taxpayers don't have. ...NPR

Mitt Romney was also a director on the board of Marriott International, a corporation known to be tax shelter central.

"Marriott was always a tax shelter promoter's first call," he says. "Marriott was one of those companies that just loved to buy tax shelters."

Bloomberg reported this year on one Marriott tax shelter, known as "Son of BOSS." It involved creating paper losses to offset taxes on real income. The Internal Revenue Service challenged the shelter and Marriott lost in court. Judges called the shelter "fictitious" and a "scheme," and the company was forced to pay $29 million. Kleinbard notes that when the shelter was adopted, Romney was the chair of Marriott's audit committee. ...NPR

My, that was good luck for Mr. Romney, wasn't it?

Reminder:  President Obama is a US citizen who is not a member of the Wall Street old-boys' network.

___

Remember the politician who wouldn't release his tax returns and it turned out he had nothing to hide? Me neither. ... Andy Borowitz, now at the New Yorker

Comments

[Richard W. Crews]

I read you every day. I never see another comment. Do you have a handle on your readership #? I hope you keep on keeping on.
I write a letter to me local paper that prints EVERY letter. It has circulation of 70K and is in a very conservative area. My rep was cunningham - off to prison, replaced by carpetbagging bilbray now reapportioned to criminal issa. I feel so represented!
My voice is heard, 4even if I'm pissing into the wind. The letters are limited to 200 words - which is hard! once a week - used to be once every 2 weeks, so we can speak out more. I've been writing for way over 10 years - couple hundred letters.
Here;s my last :
LETTER : Mitts multiple malfunctions

Romney represents a lot of what ails America. Without making any product he invades, leverages, borrows, then pillages existing industries, skimming off the top and leaving ruins where once was the America.. His world of money has no loyalties; an etch-a-sketch in all dimensions.

Romney's own sworn testimony that he kept involved in Bain activities and attended Bain company board meetings and remained CEO, sole owner and chairman of Bain all the way through 2002. If you own a company, benefit from its profits, and are paid a salary, declaring that you had left it in 1999 is an untrue SEC filing; a felony. He explains clear contradictions with “retroactive retirement.” He claims he created jobs after he claims he left.
His people claim he wasn't at Bain because he can't do two things at once. Presidents have to do dozens of things simultaneously; I guess Mitt ain't capable.
He won't release his tax records. I bet they show he's paid zero taxes some years. His $100Million IRA is a scandal of manipulation. How many jobs has his secret Swiss bank accounts created? WE taxpayers pay for his dancing horse. The man is not a benefit to America.