Originally published on Forbes.com on August 21st, 2012
My friend James thinks he may have “doped out”, as he puts it, why we aren’t getting another decade’s worth of Romney returns. James (not his real name), whom I have previously introduced, is a CPA like me, but his career has been quite a bit patchier. My father used to say that discretion is the better part of valor. It is not a lesson James ever absorbed. I don’t know how many times I’ve tried to explain to James that you can’t tell the managing partner he is acting like Hitler, even if it is true or actually especially if it is true. He does great work though and has really good insights, so somehow he always bounces back. He keeps on asking me to introduce him to Steve Forbes so Mr. Forbes can assign somebody really good to write up his ideas, but when he has something timely, like he did on the Zuckerberg wedding, he is willing to settle for me. Here is the conversation we had on a possible explanation for the hold-up on Romney’s returns:
James– I figured it out.
Me – You figured what out.
James – Why they aren’t dumping another couple of thousand pages of Romney returns out.
Me – It wouldn’t be because they have sympathy for tax bloggers with day jobs would it ?
James – Nah. That’s not it. Let me lay it out for you.
Me – You can’t just tell me ?
James – It really needs the build up. Here we go. Suppose you legitimately had a copy of say Romney’s 2004 return because of some consulting gig you did. I know it’s not very likely, but just make up a scenario.
Me – OK. Bain Capital wanted somebody from a regional firm to look at the effect that the 704(c) allocations were having.
James – OK. So now that copy shows up on the internet. They can tell it’s that copy because there are all these little notes in your handwriting on the Schedule E and the 8582. What would you do ?
Me – It would depend on what office I was in.
James – What office you were in ?
Me – Sure. If I was in Boston, I could jump out a window. If I was in Orlando, I could go buy a gun and shoot myself. Westborough, I’m not so sure.
James – You could drive to Boston maybe. But you got the idea. Nobody wants to be the guy who let one of the returns slip out. So you can be pretty sure that there are no odd copies floating around anywhere. Like the ones they gave to McCain to look at were probably returned and shredded.
Me – So you’re saying they can’t find ten years of returns ?
James – Nah. Not ten years. But maybe one year. Like somebody from the campaign calls up and says OK we’re going to give them back to 2000, since the last Son of Boss deal we did was in 1998. So somebody goes and puts the package together and they can’t find 2003. Why can’t they find 2003 ? Go ahead spin it out.
Me – That’s the year we switched software vendors and upgraded the server Yada-yada-yada
James – Yeah, whatever the story is there will be about 37 more yadas to it, but somebody must have a copy, because we sent a copy here to review and there to look at, etc.
Me – And all those copies were so radioactive that they were shredded, burned and then the ashes were shredded.
James – So what’s worse ? We’re not letting you look at the returns because it’s none of your business or here are the returns going back to 2000, except for 2003 which we cannot find ?
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It’s only a theory, but I found it pretty entertaining. If you think it is totally implausible, you may not have spent as much time in the sausage factory of tax return production as James has.
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