Romney's Taxes Reveal Several 'Minor' Millions He Didn't Declare Before Running

Reuters
Adam Martin 763 Views Jan 26, 2012

Mitt Romney's tax returns continue to pay off for the journalistic set, this time landing MSNBC a scoop as one of his campaign officials acknowledged he'd have to revise some financial disclosure forms that didn't report income from a Swiss bank account and other off-shore assets. Devastating! Actually, it kind of is: The charge here is that Romney didn't report all the money he was making to the Office of Government Ethics before he started his presidential run, which is kind of a big deal since it implies he's hiding something. Or as The Los Angeles Times says: "The fact that a small fraction of Romney's extensive holdings may not be reported correctly could reinforce an image of the Republican candidate as elite and out of touch." Omitting the account worth about $3 million was a "minor discrepancy," Romney's campaign official told MSNBC. Expect that to get some mocking: Several million dollars is a "minor" discrepancy? Please.

But you know what? It's probably not going to matter too much because this stuff is way too complex for most of us to grasp. It's like, yes, you understand somehow that the candidate is fiddling with the numbers and probably doing something shady, but you can't quite understand how, so it just doesn't seem that bad. As The Atlantic's Derek Thompson tweeted, "The timing is horrific, but the story might be too complicated to elicit visceral reaction from the undecided public."

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