Secret Swiss Bank accounts, Cayman Island Bank accounts, Bermuda Tax Haven Bank accounts… what does Mitt Romney have to hide?

What does Mitt Romney have to hide?

Why won’t he live up to his late father’s example, and voluntarily and openly reveal all his tax records?

—

Where the Money Lives

August 2012, 2012-08-08 T11:00:24.000-04:00

By Nicholas Shaxson

For all Mitt Romney’s touting of his business record, when it comes to his own money the Republican nominee is remarkably shy about disclosing numbers and investments. Nicholas Shaxson delves into the murky world of offshore finance, revealing loopholes that allow the very wealthy to skirt tax laws, and investigating just how much of Romney’s fortune (with $30 million in Bain Capital funds in the Cayman Islands alone?) looks pretty strange for a presidential candidate.

BURIED TREASURE Grand Cayman, where Bain Capital maintains at least 138 funds. Inset, Mitt Romney tries to spot his La Jolla home from the campaign plane. ©Ruth Tomlinson/Robert Harding World Imagery/Corbis (beach); by Justin Sullivan/Getty images (inset).

A person who worked for Mitt Romney at the consulting firm Bain and Co. in 1977 remembers him with mixed feelings. “Mitt was … a really wonderful boss,” the former employee says. “He was nice, he was fair, he was logical, he said what he wanted … he was really encouraging.” But Bain and Co., the person recalls, pushed employees to find out secret revenue and sales data on its clients’ competitors. Romney, the person says, suggested “falsifying” who they were to get such information, by pretending to be a graduate student working on a proj­ect at Harvard. (The person, in fact, was a Harvard student, at Bain for the summer, but not working on any such proj­ects.) “Mitt said to me something like ‘We won’t ask you to lie. I am not going to tell you to do this, but [it is] a really good way to get the information.’ … I would not have had anything in my analysis if I had not pretended.

“It was a strange atmosphere. It did leave a bad taste in your mouth,” the former employee recalls.

This unsettling account suggests the young Romney—at that point only two years out of Harvard Business School—was willing to push into gray areas when it came to business. More than three dec­ades later, as he tried to

Mitt & Wealthy Republicans out of touch with Average Americans?

Mitt?

Hello?

Mitt?

Earth to Mitt.

Come in, Mitt.

You’re out of touch, Mitt.

From George Romney To Mitt, A Shrinking Tax Rate

by Scott Horsley and Tamara Keith
– February 24, 2012Mitt Romney gave a major economic speech Friday, in which he stressed his plan to lower personal income taxes.

Romney’s own taxes became an issue last month, when he acknowledged paying a lower tax rate than many middle-class families.