Gawker's John Cook reports on a trove of information they've uncovered concerning Willard "Offshore Mitt" Romney's elaborate gyrations to avoid paying a fair income tax on the bazillion dollars he has parked in various account in the Cayman Islands:
"Mitt Romney's $250 million fortune is largely a black hole: Aside from the meager and vague disclosures he has filed under federal and Massachusetts laws, and the two years of partial tax returns (one filed and another provisional) he has released, there is almost no data on precisely what his vast holdings consist of, or what vehicles he has used to escape taxes on his income. Gawker has obtained a massive cache of confidential financial documents that shed a great deal of light on those finances, and on the tax-dodging tricks available to the hyper-rich that he has used to keep his effective tax rate at roughly 13% over the last decade." (our emphasis)
If there was ever any wonder why Offshore Mitt didn't want anyone looking through his tax returns, this information might explain why Willard and his fellow plutocrats are so eager to change the subject: they don't want people focusing on the fact that they're playing with rules they fixed while the middle class is getting poorer and poorer.
