From 4 days ago we have http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/09/21/1134905/-It-s-time-to-make-him-deny-it
The level of aggressiveness in legal and accounting strategies that would allow someone's IRA to grow to as high as $102 million surely invites suspicion regarding anything else that looks even emotively interesting in their finances. And the mere existence of Romney's Swiss account certainly passes that threshold.
There were about 19,000 accounts in Swiss banks that American citizens hid from the IRS until the lawsuit exposing them, and the IRS amnesty that followed. Simple logic suggests the owners are clustered near Mitt's end of the of wealth spectrum.
Logic also says that someone that instructs their lawyers and accountants to push the envelope to reduce their tax obligations to the extent obvious from what is known might be inclined to do some outright cheating too, especially if protected by the legendary Swiss banking secrecy.
My fourth estate training of long ago suggests that everyone running for President that has a Swiss account and an IRA with $102 million treads close enough to the line that it is entirely appropriate to ask the question..
This is a guy who ran a notorious "Son of Boss" scheme form Marriott. He is certainly not above tax evasion through Swiss bank accounts.
Some people would say, we know Romney is sleazy enough to do this, but he isn't stupid enough to do that while he's running for President. But that is probably not how it happened. He probably opened the account around 2002 when he was leaving Bain (formally). At that time there was all sorts of financial restructuring in order to transfer assets to the people who ended up taking over Bain. That would have been the ideal time to send some of the money offshore so that Romney would never have to pay taxes on it. At that time, he was not running for President and had no active plans to. Moreover, this was a Swiss bank account. The Swiss never divulge anything. What could possibly go wrong?
And that was all fine for years. The Swiss account probably would not appear anywhere on the tax returns Romney showed to McCain. But then in 2008, it all started to go bad. By that time. Romney was already running for President. He really didn't have much of a choice. He had to take the amnesty. His only decision was whether to drop out of politics altogether or to just try to tough it out. And he chose to tough it out (hypothetically speaking, of course.) After all, these records are confidential and even if it got out, the average American doesn't understand financial stuff. "I'll just tell them that is part of my financial genius. I am so much better than Obama, it won't matter."
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