Mitt Romney paid an effective tax rate of about 14 percent last year, his campaign said Friday while also announcing that the Republican presidential nominee had paid an average annual effective tax rate of about 20.2 percent between 1990 and 2009.
Romney made good on his pledge to release his tax returns from 2011 before the election, and went a step further than was previously anticipated in releasing a certified summary of his tax returns over a two-decade period preceding 2010.
Why release a "certified summary" for the past 20 years, instead of the actual returns? I doubt there's anything in there showing that Romney committed tax fraud (I'm sure his tax attorneys are capable, and the IRS would be all over that if there was any "there" there. We all know that he uses tax shelters and squirrels money away in tax havens, so finding confirmation of what we already know wouldn't be that damaging.
But there is something fishy there. Could it have anything to do with this?
Tax returns require taxpayers to state their residence address, and the Romney returns already produced, although partially redacted, state clearly that they lived in "Belmont, MA 02478" in 2012 (tax year 2011) (pdf) and 2011 (tax year 2010) (pdf):
But the Romneys, arbitrarily, refuse to disclose a copy of the returns they filed in 2010 or 2009 (for tax years 2009 and 2008) – which, perhaps not coincidentally, bracket the time period when Romney allegedly committed fraud by voting in Massachusetts when he actually resided in California. So here's the question: did Romney put his son's basement's address on the returns he filed in 2009 and 2010? Or did he truthfully use his real (non-Massachusetts) address, thus implicating himself in voter fraud?
For all the noise Republicans make over voter fraud, it would be absolutely fatal to his campaign if those tax returns showed he was living in California while voting in Massachusetes. We'd have an actual, verifiable case of deliberate voter fraud, one committed by the Republican nominee. And I suspect that is the real reason why those returns are not being released.