Here's None for You Nineteen for Me

How do you know a politician is lying?

His lips move.

So Harry Reid says “No he didn’t” when it comes to Mitt Romney paying taxes. At first, RNC Chair, Reince Preibus thought the best way to deal with this accusation was to call the Senator from Nevada a “dirty liar.” Five days later Preibus has decided the best defense is no defense at all; except when he’s comparing the 63% of Americans who would like to see more of Romney’s tax records to birthers.

Ouch.

It hurts being compared to Donald Trump.

Anyway, Romney, Preibus and Republicans in general would like us to see that the tax return issue is a distraction; they want to talk about the “real issues.” Evidently, the integrity of their candidate isn’t considered a “real issue” by Republicans. Of course, the easiest way to make this go away would be for Romney to release the last ten years of his income tax returns.

I think this is the point where it’s important to note that Mr. Romney hasn’t done anything illegal. There’s no law that compels presidential candidates to release their income tax returns. It’s just something they do.

Well, most of them.

Here’s the thing. Unlike President Obama’s birth certificate, which was a distraction (and the assertions that he was born in Keny certainly qualify as a dirty lie); tax policy is one of those “real issues” Preibus would like us to talk about. (With Romney naming Paul Ryan as his VP it almost certainly will be the subject of Democratic political ads.) Romney’s refusal to release his returns – and Democrats reminding us that he hasn’t – serves as something far more tangible to average Americans than the nuances of the Ryan Plan or the impact of the Bush Tax Cuts on the national debt. If Mitt Romney has nothing to hide, why is he hiding something? Preibus has said that Americans don’t care about Romney’s tax returns, they care about their own. He was half right. We do care about our tax returns but we also noticed when it was reported that Romney paid 14% in taxes on his $20m income for 2011. We noticed because many of us who work hard and make far less actually pay a higher percentage in taxes. It begs the question as to which loopholes in the tax code Romney would close. By electing Mitt Romney, would we be putting a tax-code reforming fox in the hen house?

Could Mitt Romney have paid no taxes for ten years? It seems mathematically impossible, doesn’t it? And yet…

I suspect Harry Reid has put Mitt Romney in something of a bind. He could release his tax records and prove Reid a liar on the specific accusation that he had paid no taxes from 2001 to 2010 but in the process he might also reveal that he paid an effective tax rate in the single digits – let’s say 6-7% – on tens of millions of dollars of income. Yes, I’m just guessing. In the absence of facts, that’s what people do. We take the information we have and make a guess. We know Romney took a lot of heat at 14% and we can reason that if he paid 14% or more over the previous ten years he would release those return, too. After all, 14% is old news at this point. So, given his reluctance to release his returns, I’m guessing he paid less; possibly a lot less. All perfectly legal, of course.

That’s the problem.

You can arm yourself, alarm yourself
But there's nowhere you can run
Cause a man with a briefcase
Can steal deduct more money
Than any man with a gun

-Don Henley, Gimme What You Got