I think it would hurt his image among people who won't be voting for him in any event. I think it would have no impact on people who were planning to vote for any (generic) Republican anyway.

I'm going to have to go with novy on this one.  Romney's message is "private sector Job Creator" and not paying taxes only reinforces that message.  When evidence of him paying a smaller percentage in taxes than his base, he can easily spin that into a Robin Hood type of deal- evading those taxes is how he Created Jobs.  Remember that his base doesn't want the rich to be taxed in the first place.  He can always film an ad at the gas pump or grocery store showing he pays sales tax and say "look at me, I pay the same tax as you do.  Isn't that only fair?"

I got more styles than prison got bricks- ain't that some shit?

"Gerry"? Or Harry Reid?

Gerrymander the poster here

I'd guess a combination of 401(k) rollovers, active management, and derivatives trading.

Has Romney ever been eligible to contribute to an IRA?  There's a $125K / $183K income limit, adjusted each year for inflation, on who can contribute.

Romney is the IRA Madoff.

I gotta admit-- I don't get it.

My bad. Basically I heard a pundit saying that the high amount was due to returns on investments, which would be ridiculous because return each year would be far greater than even Madoff was offering.

I had seriously never heard about this, so I looked it up.  Bloomberg tried to figure a way he could have reached that balance and couldn't come up with anything remotely plausible.

One thing to note is that it's a SEP IRA, so contribution limits during that time period were $30,000/year.  Bloomberg also puts the balance somewhere in a range between $21 million and $102 million.  That implies a consistent annual rate of return of somewhere between 18.5% and 26.6%.  For 28 years.

The man is clearly a genius at allocating capital.  Or something.

It's probably more like having a decent run during the 80s and 90s like everyone else, and a few good derivative trades that made bucketloads (IRAs are not limited to the stock market alone). There are plenty of stories of one good risk making the investor stupidly rich. Warren Buffett's $10 million option on the British pound that made him $10 billion in 1992 is the archetypical example -- that was a 100,000% return in about a week.

My mistake.  Those were the Roth IRA limits.  The traditional are $68K and $112K.

Those limits are for claiming tax deductions based upon IRA contributions -- not limits on the contributions themselves.

The limits on the Roth IRA are hard limits.  If you're not taking a tax deduction on the contributions to an account, it is not, functionally, a traditional IRA.  It may be the same fund into which you once poured money while eligible for the tax deduction, but that money is going into it like any other investment account now.

But that's all irrelevant because it was a SEP IRA.  When improper said "IRA", I thought he meant a traditional IRA.

My guess is that the returns will show a lot of funds given to the Mormons.

Which certainly explains why he won't release them, eh?

Word, I agree with you guys there, but I also think that his base is well... his base. He doesn't need to worry about securing their votes, they already will vote against Obama.

Interesting. What do you speculate about his income sources that would make releasing years of tax returns even slightly embarrassing? Continued income from Bain?

I wouldn't even speculate. It could be anything at all. It just seems more likely than thinking it's a bad campaign move to show how little tax he pays. zyx's point about his church donations isn't one I'd thought but seems very likely as well since he's tried hard to downplay his faith in the past. As a Mormon he all but certainly gives at least 10% and I could see him being concerned if he's given more like one or two extra sized donations for buildings and such at one point or another. Pure speculation but at the same time he is a devout Mormon so it seems very likely. I'd have no problem with this personally but again he's tried to downplay his faith in the past.

I HAD HAD SEX WITH HUNTER S THOMPSON. HE CAME IN MY MOUTH AND I SWALLOWED IT. I SHOULD HAVE HAD HIS BABY. WE WOULD BE BALLIN' LIKE KOBE'S SON!!

Considering most of America's uber-Christians will be voting for Mr. Romney this fall, Mormon or not, I find it extremely unlikely that he would be so concerned about looking devout that he would encourage his political enemies to speculate as to why he was refusing to release his returns when his dad released 12 years of returns (that probably also showed big donations to his church, in non-Mormon Michigan) without thinking twice about it.

perhaps he's doing it just to create a non-issue

I HAD HAD SEX WITH HUNTER S THOMPSON. HE CAME IN MY MOUTH AND I SWALLOWED IT. I SHOULD HAVE HAD HIS BABY. WE WOULD BE BALLIN' LIKE KOBE'S SON!!

Everything he says and does seems to accomplish that purpose, whether he intends to or not.

Oh, why not? I'll speculate after all. Facebook has been pushing one possible story, that Romney made $50 million on this company that incinerates aborted fetuses. If true, I could see why he wouldn't want that known, since abortion might just be social conservatives' "third rail" issue, and he wouldn't want to be seen as being on its wrong side.

The angle I heard yesterday on Lawrence O'Donnell was that the Romney's haven't donated their required 10% to the Mormon Church and the tax returns reflect that.

Even if that was the case, he could easily say he donated 10% but just chose not to claim the deduction on his taxes.  All he's got to say is "look, hardworking Americans don't go running around with spreadsheets every time they drop a few bucks in the collection plate.  It's not about a tax refund, it's about faith in G-d."

It's not like politicians are shy about making misleading comparisons with a tinge of cynical populism when trying to prove a point.

I got more styles than prison got bricks- ain't that some shit?

I should have included the word "uncritically" in my initial comment.

The complaint was that Reid's claim was being passed on unexamined-- "this is what passes for 'real journalist' reporting these days"-- but what the website really had was tweets from Sam Stein of Huffington Post and a few other random Joes, followed by far more tweets mocking them.

Obviously there's been coverage of the claim, but the idea that the "liberal MSM" is reporting it uncritically is what I'm disputing.  Your NBC link is to a story about the White House distancing itself from the comments and the CNN one is to a debate about the plausibility of the claim; that's hardly evidence of unwarranted credulity.

Understood. Thanks for the clarification. I wasn't looking to pick a fight. I really didn't understand what you were getting at.

[I'm not that guy.]