Mitt Romney, Offshore Tax Accounts Entangled Since Bain Capital's Founding

[Crabtownboy]

Don't get mad at me for showing what Romney and Bain did in helping people avoid the tax man ........... OK? Was it all legal. I don't know. What it ethical?

Mitt Romney's involvement with anonymous accounts in offshore tax havens goes back to the 1984 founding of Bain Capital, which raised millions of dollars from wealthy foreigners through shell corporations in Panama, a nation notorious for tax avoidance schemes and money laundering, according to a report by The Los Angeles Times.

The Times story follows on Romney's recent acknowledgement to the National Review that he established funds in the Cayman Islands for the explicit purpose of helping wealthy investors avoid paying American taxes. Bain currently operates at least 138 shell companies headquartered in the Cayman Islands, which, like Panama, has long been associated with both legal and illegal tax machinations and money laundering.

"The so-called offshore account in the Cayman Islands, for instance, is an account established by a U.S. firm to allow foreign investors to invest in U.S. enterprises and not be subject to taxes outside of their own jurisdiction," Romney told National Review's Robert Costa on Wednesday. "So in many instances, the investments in something of that nature are brought back into the United States. The world of finance is not as simple as some would have you believe. Sometimes a foreign entity is formed to allow foreign investors to invest in the United States, which may well be the case with the entities that Democrats are describing as foreign accounts."

By taxes "outside of their own jurisdiction," Romney was referring to taxes imposed by the U.S. government.

"He's basically admitting here that the Bain funds are set up in the Cayman Islands to help people avoid tax," Rebecca Wilkins, senior counsel for federal tax policy at Citizens for Tax Justice, a nonprofit tax reform group, told HuffPost. "If you want to cheat on your taxes, boy, they're making it really easy."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/....html?utm_hp_ref=politics&utm_hp_ref=politics

Other links:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-bain-creation-20120719,0,192124.story

http://www.nationalreview.com/corne...astic-about-giving-them-hundreds-or-thousands

 

[InTheLight]

"He's basically admitting here that the Bain funds are set up in the Cayman Islands to help people avoid tax," Rebecca Wilkins, senior counsel for federal tax policy at Citizens for Tax Justice, a nonprofit tax reform group, told HuffPost. "If you want to cheat on your taxes, boy, they're making it really easy."

Again, repeat after me: Tax avoidance is not the same as tax evasion.

When I do my personal income taxes I tally up my personal deductions, mostly on my schedule A and compare the result of itemizing my taxes vs. simply taking the standard deduction. Since I have kids and a mortgage, itemizing my deductions results in a lower tax burden. This is legal, but according to Rebecca Wilkins (quoted above) I guess that is CHEATING!

 

[Don]

Your jealousy knows no bounds, does it?

 

[Crabtownboy]

When I do my personal income taxes I tally up my personal deductions, mostly on my schedule A and compare the result of itemizing my taxes vs. simply taking the standard deduction. Since I have kids and a mortgage, itemizing my deductions results in a lower tax burden. This is legal, but according to Rebecca Wilkins (quoted above) I guess that is CHEATING!

I am fully confident you know the real meaning of Wilkins comment.

 

[Mexdeaf]

One would think the results of the election depends upon the voters on the BB the way CTB is posting 5 or so anti-Romney posts each day.

 

[Arbo]

I believe that legal tax avoidance is good fiscal practice; and for the Christian, good stewardship.

Crabtownboy- Are you advocating paying more tax than what is assessed? If so, how would you condsider it to be good stewardship?

 

[InTheLight]

I am fully confident you know the real meaning of Wilkins comment.

Yes, it's slander. It is not cheating on your taxes to find a legal means of reducing your taxes. This is what Bain does--gets the highest rate of return for their investors which included tax avoidance. Do you think a large private equity investment firm should only look at opportunities within the United States?

 

[Crabtownboy]

Yes, it's slander. It is not cheating on your taxes to find a legal means of reducing your taxes. This is what Bain does--gets the highest rate of return for their investors which included tax avoidance. Do you think a large private equity investment firm should only look at opportunities within the United States?

Yes, there are legal ways of avoiding taxes .... and there are illegal ways. Offshore companies in certain countries make it easy, especially for foreigners to use illegal methods.

Some active tax cheats also attempt to frustrate the IRS by employing a multi-tiered corporate structure. 124 This is done by forming a corporation that then forms and owns another corporation, thereby moving the U.S. citizen further from the assets. This does not necessarily change the ownership of the assets, 125 but it makes it more difficult for the IRS to prove the fraud.

http://www.netatty.com/articles/tax.html

Did Bain break the law? I don't know. You don't know. We do know they set up shell companies in the Cayman Islands as well as other countries and this may give the appearance of illegality.

Oh, and it isn't slander. She did not say "Bain participated in illegal activities." She said it would make it easy to participate in illegal activities. There is a difference here.

By the way, do you give Obama any credit for not having any offshore accounts?

 

[InTheLight]

By the way, do you give Obama any credit for not having any offshore accounts?

It has not been established that Obama has no off shore accounts. If he did it wouldn't bother me in the least.

 

[InTheLight]

Oh, and it isn't slander. She did not say "Bain participated in illegal activities." She said it would make it easy to participate in illegal activities. There is a difference here.

A razor thin difference. Funny how when a person says "They sure make it easy to cheat" that really means the speaker is saying they are not cheating.

But when someone says, "there is no evidence that the investors had ties to paramilitaries in El Salvador" that really means "Mitt Romney Started Bain Capital With Money From Families Tied To Death Squads."

Funny, that....

 

[LadyEagle]

This is another trash piece

The obama machine is at work, including the main stream media.

Is there already another ad out by obama's super pac about this?

More debunking is in order.

True journalism in the USA is in the death throes.

 

[carpro]

This whole issue is smoke and innuendo.

Clients of Bain have offshore accounts in the Caymans

Romney does not. Don't think he ever did.

Romney has 1 Swiss bank account with $3 million in it. Tax records show U.S. federal income tax was paid in full on such account.

So let me try a little innuendo of my own. Debbie Wasserman Schultz...that's right, the DNC chairwoman that has screamed the loudest, had an offshore account in the Caymans. Now what? Whose eye is blackest?

All this is about avoiding Obama's record and exacerbating feelings of class warfare. That's all Obama has.

As his ads have shown , he will tell any lie or half truth and use any kind of sleazy innuendo to be re-elected, as long as it stays away from his record.

One of ineptitude and failure.

 

[saturneptune]

The obama machine is at work, including the main stream media.

Is there already another ad out by obama's super pac about this?

More debunking is in order.

True journalism in the USA is in the death throes.

I guess I should get out more away from where I live. In Kentucky, every political commercial from both parties tries to paint its opponent as associated with Obama. There are some local Democrats that even accuse their Republican opponent as being allied with Obama. Most of the national polls have Obama ahead in the electoral college, but saw no sign of that in Kentucky. (Obama got 36% of the vote in 2008, and only got 51% of the vote in the 2012 Democrat primary against uncommitted) Anyway, we have been in Washington, Oregon, California, and Nevada for the last two weeks, and the political ads are just the opposite. Everyone wants to be allied with Obama.

 

[billwald]

tax havens and death squads????????????

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/8/...d_over_bains_ties_to_el_salvador_death_squads

PRINTER-FRIENDLY
Romney Scrutinized over Bain’s Ties to El Salvador Death Squads
Republican candidate Mitt Romney continues to face scrutiny over his record at the private equity firm, Bain Capital. The latest controversy to surround Bain concerns how Romney helped found the company with investments from Central American elites linked to death squads in El Salvador. After initially struggling to find investors, Romney traveled to Miami in 1983 to win pledges of $9 million, 40 percent of Bain’s start-up money. Some investors had extensive ties to the death squads responsible for the vast majority of the tens of thousands of deaths in El Salvador during the 1980s. The investors include the Salaverria family, whom the former U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, Robert White, has previously accused of directly funding the Salvadoran paramilitaries. In his memoir, former Bain executive Harry Strachan writes that Romney pushed aside his own misgivings about the investors to accept their backing. Strachan writes: "These Latin American friends have loyally rolled over investments in succeeding funds, actively participated in Bain Capital’s May investor meetings, and are still today one of the largest investor groups in Bain Capital."

 

[InTheLight]

Romney Scrutinized over Bain’s Ties to El Salvador Death Squads

There you go AGAIN--DERAILING THREADS!

This topic has been debunked in another thread.

http://www.baptistboard.com/showthread.php?t=80629

 

[billwald]

The topic is bain capital's founding!

 

[billwald]

from the closed thread:

"At the time, U.S. officials were publicly accusing some Salvadoran exiles in Miami of funding right-wing death squads in El Salvador. Some family members of the first Bain Capital investors were later linked to groups responsible for killings, although no evidence indicates that those relatives invested in Bain or benefited from it.


"From another of the links:

"Family members of some of those early investors allegedly had ties to right-wing paramilitaries involved in death squads in the country's brutal civil war, although the paper found no evidence that the investors themselves had ties to paramilitaries."



DIRTY MONEY is OK if a nice family member can be found to transfer it?


Using the same logic, some people claim that God created the universe in seven calendar days but no evidence has been found to demonstrate it.