Have you seen this recent ad from President Obama's campaign that is currently airing in Pennsylvania?
President Obama: I'm Barack Obama and I approved this message.
Narrator: Tax havens, offshore accounts, carried interest. Mitt Romney has used every trick in the book.
On Screen: Investigation: Mitt Romney's Offshore Accounts, Tax Loopholes, and Mysterious I.R.A. "This unsettling account suggests the young Romney -- at that point only two years out of Harvard Business School -- was willing to push into gray areas when it came to business." -- VANITY FAIR, AUGUST 2002
Narrator: Romney admits that over the last two years he's paid less than 15% in taxes on $43 Million in income. Makes you wonder if in some years he paid any taxes at all? We don't know because Romney has released just one full year of his tax returns and won't release anything before 2010.
Romney: You know what? I've put out as much as we're going to put out.
Narrator: What is Mitt Romney hiding?
Wow! That's some bold conjecture, essentially suggesting that there are years that Romney didn't pay any taxes. Think about that. President Obama, who is a very principled individual has approved this message. Careful, deliberate President Obama, who thoroughly thinks everything through, approved this message. Does it make you wonder if his campaign already knows something that we don't know? Maybe we should ask a tax analyst.
It just so happens that Michael Eric Dyson sitting in for Ed tonight on The Ed Show had David Cay Johnston (tax analyst, columnist for Reuters, 2001 Pulitzer Prize for exposing tax loopholes and inequities, author of "Perfectly Legal" and "Free Lunch") on the show tonight, and had something interesting to say about the ad.
Well, I think the question isn't about the IRAs. That's actually a tax mistake because when he takes the money out, he'll have to pay the 35%.
The real issue is, why is he not releasing his returns? Now, the Obama campaign has run an ad that says, maybe because you didn't pay any taxes some years. Obama's a cautious man. Look at the way he got rid of Osama bin Laden. You know, he took the action but he was very cautious about it. Well, I don't think they said this without knowing that there are years with no taxes. Remember, twenty-three years of returns, from '84 up until 2007, were given to the McCain campaign. So apparently, John McCain's people can see them, but the American public can't. So there's something in his tax returns where's he's concluded it's safer and better to not disclose them than to give them to us.
This peaked Michael Eric Dyson's interest and he asked, "So you think the Obama Campaign has sure knowledge of this. Somebody's leaked it? Somebody's seen it?"
Or there's an abstract, or someone testified under oath, or somebody made a mistake. You know, years ago I broke this story that Donald Trump had a negative net worth, he wasn't a multi-billionaire, because somebody gave me his personal net worth statement that his bankers had prepared.
Yesterday, after the Obama ad was released, Alexander Burns at Politico asked the Romney campaign if it was possible that there were years that Romney paid no taxes.
Businessweek's Josh Green suggested that after the financial crisis of 2008, "it’s possible [Romney] suffered a large enough capital loss that, carried forward and coupled with his various offshore tax havens, he wound up paying no U.S. federal taxes at all in 2009."
So I asked the Romney campaign: Can they knock down that possibility? Was there any year in which Romney paid $0?
"Not true," replied Romney press secretary Andrea Saul.
That doesn't preclude the possibility that Romney paid very little in taxes in 2009 or another year, or that there's something else in his taxes he'd prefer not to share with the public. The guessing game over that will surely continue until and unless Romney puts out more information.
Romney camp: 'Not true' he paid $0 in taxes
What do you think? Is the allegation "not true" as the Romney campaign has stated, or is President Obama too cautious to make such an allegation without already knowing it is true?
Michael Eric Dyson's entire interview with David Cay Johnston is posted below the orange squiggly. Also, a diary I posted earlier today about the new ad from President Obama's Truth team, New Obama Ad Destroys Romney on His Hypocrisy, has fallen off of the recent diary list. If you have a chance, please share it with your friends, family and co-workers. It's important to get the truth out about the way Romney has twisted President Obama's words and used them as an attack against him.