like i said all along. he was able to understate the value of assets and get then into his ira.
If Mitt Romney is looking for a loophole to close to help pay for his tax plan, he might want to look at one that helped him build his own retirement savings. His freakishly massive retirement savings.
For now, the Internal Revenue Service is looking into the kinds of tax schemes that reportedly have helped Romney build what is certainly one of the world's largest individual retirement accounts, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Laura Saunders at the WSJ's Total Return blog pointed out Wednesday that a Treasury official recently wrote a letter to Congress saying the IRS has for some time been "diligently" investigating the sorts of schemes that reportedly boosted Romney's IRA.
Here's the background: One of the many noteworthy things about Romney's steroidally enhanced wealth is the unusually large size of his IRA. According to Romney's financial disclosures, his IRA is valued at between $20.7 million and $101.6 million. The Washington Post recently pegged it at about $87 million.
Why is this unusual? Because, at the time Romney was building his IRA, people were only allowed to contribute $30,000 to them per year, at most. As William Cohan noted recently, had Romney contributed that maximum every year from 1984 to 1999 -- the years Romney was, on paper at least, either employed by Bain & Co. or running the spinoff private-equity firm Bain Capital -- then the most he could have contributed would be $450,000.
You may now take a moment to consider the vast difference between $450,000 and $87 million.
What accounts for this gap? The WSJ reported earlier this year that Romney's IRA likely swelled to that size because of an awesome Bain retirement plan that let executives buy stock in companies Bain owned at super-cheap prices and then shove them into IRAs. When those stock prices took off, then so did the value of those IRAs. Badda bing, badda boom, tax-free investment.
Democrats in Congress say the Bain approach to IRA building is taking advantage of a loophole that they want tightened. They say Bain executives and anybody else using this approach have been cheating by undervaluing the investments they put in their IRA, to get around contribution limits. The scheme is legal, but only if investments are priced at fair market value when they go into the IRA.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/04/irs-romney-tax-ira_n_1940453.html
If Mitt Romney is looking for a loophole to close to help pay for his tax plan, he might want to look at one that helped him build his own retirement savings. His freakishly massive retirement savings.
For now, the Internal Revenue Service is looking into the kinds of tax schemes that reportedly have helped Romney build what is certainly one of the world's largest individual retirement accounts, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Laura Saunders at the WSJ's Total Return blog pointed out Wednesday that a Treasury official recently wrote a letter to Congress saying the IRS has for some time been "diligently" investigating the sorts of schemes that reportedly boosted Romney's IRA.
Here's the background: One of the many noteworthy things about Romney's steroidally enhanced wealth is the unusually large size of his IRA. According to Romney's financial disclosures, his IRA is valued at between $20.7 million and $101.6 million. The Washington Post recently pegged it at about $87 million.
Why is this unusual? Because, at the time Romney was building his IRA, people were only allowed to contribute $30,000 to them per year, at most. As William Cohan noted recently, had Romney contributed that maximum every year from 1984 to 1999 -- the years Romney was, on paper at least, either employed by Bain & Co. or running the spinoff private-equity firm Bain Capital -- then the most he could have contributed would be $450,000.
You may now take a moment to consider the vast difference between $450,000 and $87 million.
What accounts for this gap? The WSJ reported earlier this year that Romney's IRA likely swelled to that size because of an awesome Bain retirement plan that let executives buy stock in companies Bain owned at super-cheap prices and then shove them into IRAs. When those stock prices took off, then so did the value of those IRAs. Badda bing, badda boom, tax-free investment.
Democrats in Congress say the Bain approach to IRA building is taking advantage of a loophole that they want tightened. They say Bain executives and anybody else using this approach have been cheating by undervaluing the investments they put in their IRA, to get around contribution limits. The scheme is legal, but only if investments are priced at fair market value when they go into the IRA.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/04/irs-romney-tax-ira_n_1940453.html
