Will Romney 2016 Be Haunted By Unreleased Tax Returns?
I will probably not vote for Mitt Romney, but I think we could do a lot worse when it comes to who our next President is. After obsessing about the matter for almost a year, I decided that there could not be anything in his unreleased tax returns that disqualified him from being President or reflected poorly on his character. If I were in charge of the tax division of his campaign – and there will likely be one – I would do a data dump going back to at least 1990 the day after he announces. I would call the strategy “Let’s Throw PWC Under The Campaign Bus”, because anything sketchy in the returns would be blamed on the accountants. He could probably gather together a fairly large group of entrepreneurs of both parties who were convinced to participate in sketchy shelters by prominent firms.
Tax Court Judge Appreciates Art More Than Your Average Revenue Agent
Lew’s comment is probably a good segue into another thing that struck me about this case. Note the phrase catalogue raisonnée, which I had to look up. It’s part of Lew’s active vocabulary. Bottom line is that, in general, lawyers have much better educations than accountants. That had me wondering if Judge Lauber’s appreciation for art would show up in his biography. Well, it did. Between his bachelor’s degree from Yale in 1971 and his JD from Yale in 1977, he received an MA in classics from Clare College, Cambridge. That’s not the Cambridge that is forty miles or so east of Worcester with the former seminary for Congregational ministers and the technical college, the town where Margaret Fuller and Thomas Wentworth Higginson grew up. It’s the one in England. Clare College was founded in 1326.
Follow Me
Over and over again courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging one’s affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everybody does so, rich or poor; and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands: taxes are enforced exactions, not voluntary contributions. To demand more in the name of morals is mere cant.