Tag Archives: bermuda

HAPPENING NOW: George W. Bush at the Cayman Alternative Investment Summit

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Bush and Romney (and the richest Americans) built that! Romney plans to give even more tax cuts to the super rich — maybe he’ll keynote the Summit one day.

Buzzfeed: Former President George W. Bush is set to deliver the keynote address at the Cayman Alternative Investment Summit on Grand Cayman just a few days before the election. The conference will feature Bush as the keynote speaker on the first night, and British billionaire Sir Richard Branson on the second night. ”Institutional investors, private investors, asset allocators, fund managers, service providers, academics and regulators will benefit from this discussion on the future of the industry,” reads to the FAQ section of the website.

http://www.caymanai.com

Money can buy tax laws that give you more money to bank in the Caymans

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“The reason Romney pays a rate of only 14 percent on $13 million of income in 2011 — a lower rate than many in the middle class — is because he exploits a loophole that allows private equity managers to treat their income as capital gains, taxed at only 15 percent. And that loophole exists solely because private equity and hedge fund managers have so much political clout — as a result of their huge fortunes and the money they’ve donated to political candidates — that neither party will remove it.”

— Mitt Romney: A warrior for the wealthy? – CSMonitor.com (via robot-heart-politics)

Hilariously, Romney explained that the lower tax rate on capital gains is fair and a well-earned reward or incentive because lower tax rates on the wealthy “put people to work.” Except the Capital Gains Elite haven’t been using the savings to create jobs in America, not for a long time — instead they’ve been hording their U.S. tax savings in other countries like Switzerland or the Cayman Islands, haven’t they? Just look at Romney’s two tax returns.

And Mitt thinks the wealthy should have even more tax breaks?

10 things Mitt Romney will not talk about: the “Just Trust Me” campaign

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“Unlike President Obama, you don’t have to wait until after the election to find out what I believe in — or what my plans are.” — Mitt Romney’s biggest lie so far

Mitt Romney says he wants to talk about issues but he refuses to talk about the following:

  1. his tax returns (and accounts in Bermuda, the Caymans, and Switzerland)
  2. his religion (which is now another excuse for not releasing tax returns)
  3. Bain Capital
  4. 2002 Olympics
  5. his Governorship of Massachusetts (and the wiped computers)
  6. his energy policy
  7. which tax deductions he’d eliminate
  8. Medicare benefits and how repealing ACA would impact them
  9. his big campaign donors
  10. and… the newest off-limits topics: abortion and Todd Akin

Romney is constantly attempting to change the conversation from Bain or his tax returns (or anything else he doesn’t want to talk about) with “issues,” as in, “we need to talk about the real issues!”  But paraphrasing Romney’s own campaign advisers, who revealed their strategy recently: details and specifics are for losers. So how exactly can you debate issues without specifics or details?

You don’t. You can’t. It’s obvious the Romney campaign isn’t trying to sway voters with Mitt’s ideas or plans — or even with Mitt himself as a “person.” They’re running a ‘just trust me’ campaign, as Greg Sargent explains:

Romney advisers are explicitly confirming that all of this is part of a grand strategy to only signal general direction to the American people. It’s a guiding idea that specifics are a political peril to be avoided. The campaign thinks sharing details about what he’d actually do as president would be politically suicidal. As Steve Benen asks: “what does it say about the merit of Romney’s policy agenda if voters are likely to recoil if they heard the whole truth?” And this is coming after the campaign touted the selection of Paul Ryan as proof that the GOP ticket is deeply serious about policy and committed to making the tough decisions Democrats won’t.

Just trust Mitt Romney — you’ll find out why after he wins the election. Really.

The Bain Files: will 954 pages of Bain’s financial documents reveal anything?

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Joe. My. God. explains what this is about: 

Gawker has posted 954 pages of previously unseen and labyrinthine Bain financial documents which they say may reveal proof of Mitt Romney’s attempt to cloak his massive holdings in tax-proof domestic and offshore accounts.

Bain isn’t a company so much as an intricate suite of steadily proliferating inter-related holding companies and limited partnerships, some based in Delaware and others in the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg, and elsewhere, designed to collectively house roughly $66 billion in wealth in its many crevices and chambers. When Romney left in 1999, he and his wife retained significant investments in many of those Bain vehicles—he claims they are “passive investments” and that they are managed in a blind trust (though the trustee isn’t blind enough to meet federal standards of independence). But aside from disparate snippets of information contained in his federal and Massachusetts financial disclosure forms, his 2010 tax returns, and SEC filings, the nature of those investments has been obfuscated by design.

Gawker says that the documents are so deliberately vague and complex that they cannot begin to decipher what they actually say. They are asking forensic accountants and their readers to dig in.

Bain Documents: Romney Offshore Investments Used ‘Blockers’ To Avoid Taxes – ABC News (via: sarahlee310)

The private equity firm founded by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney made use of arcane techniques in several of its Cayman Islands-based funds to avoid U.S. taxes, according to a trove of Bain Capital’s private audit and finance records made public on the website Gawker today.

The audited financial statements of one of the Cayman Islands funds make note of the use of “blocker” entities, which are used to help retirement accounts and nonprofit entities avoid some taxes. Financial statements for another fund note that it “intends to conduct its operations so it will … not be subject to United States federal income or withholding tax …”

Those details emerge on the statements of two funds in which Romney still holds a sizeable investment, according to the financial disclosure statements he filed when he announced his bid for president.

The publication of the Bain Documents on the Gawker website could rekindle debate about Romney’s role at the company, and specifically about Bain’s decision to domicile many of its funds in offshore locations known as tax havens.

Fortune‘s Dan Primack calls the documents “worthless” and says he had them months ago…

Alex Seitz-Wald homes in on one discovery:

[O]ne immediate revelation is that Sankaty fund, based in Delaware for tax purposes, lent over $3 million to Las Vegas Sands, the casino company owned by Adelson. The fund made two loans of $2.4 million and $600,000 in 2009 to the Sands. Romney’s IRA held between $250,000 and $500,000 in the partnership, and made $50,000 and $100,000 from it in 2011. Adelson has become the largest donor to the Republican Party and conservative outside groups, dropping at least $70 million. 

Paul Ryan suggests Mitt Romney wants the wealthy to pay more taxes: oops

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Daily Intel reports on the Bob Schieffer ‘exclusive’ fail interview with Romney-Ryan:

“Romney praised Ryan’s (questionable) knack for bipartisanship several times, and looked on with approval as his charismatic running mate attacked President Obama for his “fundamental lack of leadership.” The duo are apparently so in step that they’ve started wearing matching outfits, and even share the same policy on disclosing financial information.”

But Daily Intel notes a curious turn in the interview when they began discussing tax differences between the aristocracy and the peasantry:

Bob Schieffer: You say of course the wealthiest people pay the larger share, but don’t they also pay at a lower rate? When you figure in capital gains and all of that?

Mitt Romney: Well, it depends on the individual, what their source of income is. But if you look at the top one percent or five percent or quartile, whatever, they pay the largest share of taxes. And that’s not something which I would propose making smaller.

 Then Ryan jumped in to elaborate on Romney’s plan:

What we’re saying is take away the tax shelters that are uniquely enjoyed by people in the top tax brackets so they can’t shelter as much money from taxation, should lower tax rates for everybody to make America more competitive.

Huh? Suddenly Team Plutocracy is “proposing” taking away the tax shelters from the super rich? Here’s video via PoliticsUSA — watch Mitt’s face transform from pleased with himself (normal) to disapproving daddy in 11 seconds flat:


…

Daily Intel notes, “As Jonathan Chait has discussed several times, a recent study by the Brookings Institution and the Tax Policy Center concluded that Romney’s tax plan would require a tax increase for the middle class, while the richest Americans would pay lower rates and a lower share of the tax burden.”

And we already know that Romney chose the one running mate whose tax plan would lower Mitt’s effective tax rate to less than 1%. There is NO WAY that Romney-Ryan are going to eliminate the very loopholes, shelters, and tax rates with which Romney has padded his fortune and is now angrily hiding from the American people. Remember this is a guy who took a $77,000 tax deduction on a horse in 2010 (who knows WHAT he’s deducted in the past 10 years). I’d like to hear Mitt Romney say that he thinks the highest incomes should pay more in taxes than they do now — and he never will. Because that is exactly what would happen without those shelters Ryan mentioned. Gaffe?

UNLESS, of course, Ryan forgot to mention (and Bob Schieffer helpfully let slide) that if Romney plans to take away tax shelters, he more than makes up for that by lowering the effective tax rate for top earners, and increasing it on the rest of us, which works out to the super rich paying even less in taxes either way.

Ha ha. How does fairness work?!

Seriously. Where are the other tax returns, Willard?

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Source: sandandglass

We know a few things from one return. Imagine what we’d learn from ten more! Unbelievably, the Republican Party continues to defend this guy’s obstructionism and secrecy—he’s their presidential candidate!

Like Mitt Romney, the world’s super rich are hiding at least $21 trillion offshore

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CBS News: “With about 55,000 inhabitants, the Cayman Islands should not be a well-known name in the rest of the world, but the tiny Caribbean territory has become famous as a tax haven for the world’s super rich. According to a new report, the Caymans – along with the other dozen or so international havens for wealth like Switzerland and Bermuda – are the holders of so much of the world’s capital, entire regional economies could be moved on it. The Tax Justice Network has just released a report estimating that the world’s tax havens house anywhere from $21 trillion to $32 trillion of money that governments cannot tax.” 

It has been revealed that Mitt Romney keeps part of his fortune in all three tax havens mentioned above: the Caymans, Switzerland, and Bermuda. And he wants to be president.

Mitt’s money: an IRA worth $100 million and other things we’ll never know the answers to

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Josh Marshall asks: ”With IRA contributions capped at $6,000 a year, how did Mitt manage to amass an IRA worth $100 million? Hint: an Island might be involved.”

I think the Island of Misfit Toys may be the only island on earth not holding part of the Romney fortune.

Mitt Romney: Believe in America (invest in the Caymans)

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In his Vanity Fair piece Mitt Romney’s Offshore Accounts, Tax Loopholes, and Mysterious I.R.A., Nicholas Shaxson discusses offshore tax havens and something not a lot of Americans know: America is also an offshore tax haven for foreign money:

“Little noticed in the academic discussions of financialization is the role of offshore tax havens, one of the big reasons the financial sector has become so powerful. In 1966, Michael Hudson, a young Chase Manhattan balance-of-payments economist, was in a company elevator when he was handed a memo by a former State Department operative. The memo came from the U.S. government, and Hudson was tasked with figuring out how much foreign money the U.S. might attract. “They were saying, ‘We want to replace Switzerland,’ ” Hudson explains. “All this money will come here if we make this the criminal center of the world. We wanted foreign criminal money, which was patriotic, but not American criminal money.”

“In the years since then, almost unknown to most Americans, the United States has turned itself into a giant tax haven for foreigners, just as the memo suggested. Federal and state tax laws have been deliberately shaped to give foreigners special tax exemptions unavailable to Americans, plus financial secrecy and exemptions from regulatory restraints. “We have criticized offshore tax havens for their secrecy and lack of transparency,” said Senator Carl Levin. “But look what is going on in our own backyard.”

“In this grand scenario, tax havens such as the Caymans serve as feeders of foreign savings into Tax Haven U.S.A. from abroad, providing foreign investors with additional ways to skip around tax, disclosure, and regulatory requirements that they might trigger if they invested directly.

“The money sucked into Tax Haven U.S.A., often via the “feeder” tax havens, is frequently tax-evading and other criminal foreign money, in the spirit of Hudson’s 1966 memo, and it is predominantly channeled not into productive investment but into real estate and financial business.” 

Does this imply that if an American quarter-billionaire can get his wealth into foreign off-shore accounts, he can funnel it back into America with “special tax exemptions,” because it’s been magically transformed into foreign money. I guess that’s how the one percent launder their money, pay little or no federal tax, and call themselves patriots.

Mitt Romney wants your vote — he just doesn’t want to tell you how much he’s really worth or where he keeps all his money.

Mitt Romney’s campaign slogan may be “Believe in America,” but he’s chosen to invest his money in offshore tax havens like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. 

barackobama: Mitt Romney’s campaign slogan may be “Believe in America,” but he’s chosen to invest his money in offshore tax havens like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. 

More undisclosed offshore money: Romney’s even wealthier than previously reported

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You don’t get to know how much Mitt Romney is worth — or where he keeps his money. Via Political Wire: “Mitt Romney’s investment portfolio “has included an offshore company that remained invisible to voters as his political star rose,” the AP reports.”

“Based in Bermuda, Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors Ltd. was not listed on any of Romney’s state or federal financial reports. The company is among several Romney holdings that have not been fully disclosed, including one that recently posted a $1.9 million earning — suggesting he could be wealthier than the nearly $250 million estimated by his campaign.”

“The omissions were permitted by state and federal authorities overseeing Romney’s ethics filings… But Romney’s limited disclosures deprive the public of an accurate depiction of his wealth and a clear understanding of how his assets are handled and taxed.”

original image via: christopherstreet

This is how the wealthiest become even wealthier: earn money in America, offshore it to other countries to avoid taxes. THAT’S HOW AMERICA WORKS!

Investigation: Mitt Romney’s Offshore Accounts, Tax Loopholes, and Mysterious I.R.A. | Vanity Fair – “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.”