Romney's taxes: a whole new look

Here's a totally new possibility I had not considered until today, when an article on Huffington Post tipped me off to think about another explanation of Romney's reluctance to release his tax returns.

It could explain how it could be true (1) that he had never paid less than 13% in taxes, which he said last week; and (2) that he had paid no taxes at all in some years, as Harry Reid said a couple of weeks ago.

He said, I never paid less than 13% in taxes. 

He did not say "to the IRS."

What the article said was that in 2008 Romney "sought and received $787,455 in foreign tax credits from the U.S. Treasury to cover his tax payments to other nations."   This means he could subtract that much as a credit from the taxes that would otherwise be owed to the IRS, meaning he paid that much less to the IRS.

Wooaaahhh !!!!

I never thought:  maybe his total taxes paid was "not less than 13%" but a big chunk of it went to other countries.    In effect, he took money from US to pay THEM.

Now that would be even less popular than using tax loopholes to subtract losses in one year from capital gains in another, winding up with zero taxes in some years.   Apparently it's perfectly legal -- it means they don't pay taxes on the same income in two different countries.  But it definitely shifts tax money from us to other countries.    This probably applies to stocks in companies that are incorporated overseas -- the off shore stuff.  So you pay taxes in those countries, even though much of their business is done in the U.S.

Perfectly legal, perhaps, but a big embarrassment on the campaign trail.   How do you think a young family struggling to make ends meet, and paying their taxes, would like knowing that he took credits against his taxes owed for his foreign tax payments -- and then counted them as part of the "at least 13%?

Stay tuned.  Let's see if this could be true as another reason Romney's not showing us his tax returns.

Ralph