NOTE FROM TRUSTEE BRAD MALT
Brad Malt / Mitt Romney for PresidentThis morning, Gov. and Mrs. Romney filed their 2011 tax return with the IRS. At 3:00pm today, the Romney for President campaign will be posting the 2011 return online. — The complete 2011 tax return, with full schedules, statements, and attachments …
Some tax facts:
Mitt Romney has three years to file amended tax returns without penalties. That is the law.
The statement “signed under penalty of perjury” is only a formality. The 2010 and 2011 tax returns were prepared knowing FULL WELL that Romney would be a candidate for the presidency.
So, there is NOTHING to stop the entire document from being a very carefully massaged legal fiction, written not for the IRS but for the race.
This is borne out in his refusal to release ANY tax return that can’t be confidentially amended. (Federal law prohibits disclosure of any emendation other than voluntary self-disclosure).
When he amends, if he underpaid, he can pay with small interest penalties. OR, he can receive a whopping refund from his various “forgotten” dancing horse deductions.
Thus, we now have ZERO of Mitt’s tax returns (that can be trusted.)
On the other hand, trust me, because this is what I do for a living.
We need MORE than two potentially fictive tax returns. Don’t stop asking.
For more, see: “We Don’t Actually Have ANY of Mitt Romney’s Tax Returns” 17 August 2012.
Courage.
UPDATE 3:45 PM PDT: Lest you think I’m flim-flamming you, think of the above while you read this from The Daily Beast:
They included the following: in 2011, the Romneys had $13,696,951 in income, mostly from investments. They paid $1,935,708 in taxes, giving them an effective tax rate of 14.1 percent. The Romneys donated $4,020,772 to charity—nearly 30 percent of their total income, which is very impressive indeed. Next, however, trustee Malt notes that “the Romneys claimed a deduction for $2.25 million of those charitable contributions.” In other words, they didn’t take a deduction for nearly $1.8 million in charitable donations— donations for which they would have been perfectly entitled to take deductions. If the Romneys’ income were taxed at the 15 percent rate levied on investment income, that means the Romneys needlessly paid an extra $270,000 in taxes. If their income was taxed at the top marginal income tax rate of 35 percent, that means they needlessly paid an extra $630,000 in taxes…
“The statement “signed under penalty of perjury” is only a formality.”
Even less, but more, so. The only thing “signed under the penalty of perjury” was the Notary’s Public signature acknowledging that she (I believe it was a woman) was satisfactorily and statutorily convinced that the signee of the letter was who he said he was and that she also witnessed the signature that adorns the document. The information included in the notarized letter was in no way sworn to under oath by the singee; thus the information contained therein could be as false as tits on a bull and there would be no perjury involved. The author of the letter never swore an oath as to the veracity of the information contained therein.
That the PWC letter notarized is relatively meaningless legally, but wholly meaningful contextually. As an example, I could take a Sharpie™ to a paper towel and write “I, Buffalo Rude, believe the Sun revolves around the Earth and that said Earth is flat.” Then take it to a local bank, present valid ID to the notary, sign the bottom of the paper towel in his/her presence, he/she would then inscribe the standard notary language to the towel, affix his/her stamp, sign and, viola!, I would have a duly notarized paper towel professing easily provable falsehoods. And no law would have been broken.
TL;DR version – The notary is a lame attempt by a desperate campaign to add a false air of authenticity to a letter that is in no way legally bound to factually accurate.
Well said BR.
Yes. It’s one of the “tells” of the forger that the forgery must always be PERFECT.
This kind of legal flim-flam stops working when people start to realize that you’re lying. And when you say you’re going to completely repeal Obamacare one day, then go on TV the next and take credit for it and say what you’d like to keep of it, and then have an aide say ‘Oh no, he actually meant repeal all Obamacare,’ sooner or later people are going to realize you’re lying.
It becomes so blatant that even a reporter can see it, and that’s pretty blatant.
And a con man known to be a liar very quickly becomes a very skinny con man.
He’s gotten away with so many lies and flip flops already, they must figure that this illusion of disclosure will get by too. This level of ignorance by Mitt and his staff normally would disqualify him from winning, but the GOP base doesn’t live in a reality based world.
Funny you should mention it, Bill. This came out just today:
Conservatives Embrace Alternate Polling Reality (BuzzFeed) — Dean Chambers, founder of unskewedpolls.com, has reweighted national polling data based on Rasmussen partisan trends. His results give Romney a wide lead ….
I gather, then, that MittCo can amend his return after the election to pick up the rest of the charitable deductions he chose not to claim a deduction for. What I’m not clear about is how the total income numbers could shift so dramatically: in a summary released earlier, the Romney’s income was stated as $20 million (http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mitt-romney-releases-tax-returns/2012/01/23/gIQAj5bUMQ_story.html), and in this new return, it’s boiled down to only $13 million (http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/09/21/169378/romney-releases-2011-income-tax.html).
It’s actually pretty simple: everything he’s said is a lie. He doesn’t care about “truth” — he only cares about winning. Cooking the books? Well, I’m pretty sure that he’s been doing it for so long that it doesn’t even seem like lying to him. I watched the 60 Minutes interview last night, and pausing only to howl with derisive laughter at lie after lie, I was astonished that this flim-flam man could tell these whoppers without batting an eye (other than his poker “tell” when he really wants to “charm” you and he does his little Southern Belle batting his eyelashes and doing his rictus-grin). I’m sure if he was directly asked he’d just have a glib lie on tap. I can pretty much assure you that NEITHER number was ever true.