Thursday, August 23, 2012

Romney Used "Blockers" to Avoid Taxes

This is deeply offensive to me -- some entitled rich guy getting away with not paying taxes. Everyone's digging into Bain docs revealed at Gawker.

The private equity firm founded by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney made use of arcane techniques in several of its Cayman Islands-based funds to avoid U.S. taxes, according to a trove of Bain Capital's private audit and finance records made public on the website Gawker today.

The audited financial statements of one of the Cayman Islands funds make note of the use of "blocker" entities, which are used to help retirement accounts and nonprofit entities avoid some taxes. Financial statements for another fund note that it "intends to conduct its operations so it will … not be subject to United States federal income or withholding tax ..." abcnews