Returns Of The King

Mitt Romney threw a Friday afternoon news dump smokescreen today by releasing his complete tax return for last year only, showing A) his income estimates were off by 50% or so and B) the wheels are coming off for good.

OFA deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter said Mitt Romney's tax returns showed why the president's call for higher taxes on the wealthy made sense.

“Today’s release of Mitt Romney’s 2011 tax returns confirms what we already knew – that people like Mitt Romney pay a lower tax rate than many middle class families because of a set of complex loopholes and tax shelters only available to those at the top," she said in a statement. "Yet, Mitt Romney still wants to give multi-millionaires an additional $250,000 tax cut at the expense of middle class taxpayers who will see their taxes go up."

Stephanie Cutter is quite good at her job, folks.  Unlike the other team.

Cutter added that Romney still had not released any tax returns from before 2010, despite disclosing about one page of details on his effective tax rates from 1990-2009 on Friday.

Yeah, those details are a summary of Mitt's tax returns for the last 20 years, according to accounting firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers.   Not the actual returns.  So, hey.  But it's notarized, right?  As Chris Hayes remarked on Twitter on Friday:

The tax returns are a good reminder that the trustee of Romney's "blind trust" is his personal attorney. Aka: it's not really blind.
— Christopher Hayes (@chrislhayes) September 21, 2012

 Cutter cuts on:

"While the tax return for the one year released today continues to mask Romney’s true wealth and income from Bain Capital, leaving the American people in the dark about critical details about his finances,  it does confirm that he continues to profit from millions of dollars invested overseas," Cutter said. "These types of investments, the use of tax loopholes, and the resort to foreign blocker corporations enabling him to reduce his U.S. tax obligations, all raise basic and still unanswered question – why does Mitt Romney not just release the full returns , instead of the bare summary he has provided of the last 20 years, so voters can make their own judgments about Mitt Romney’s finances?   As Mitt Romney’s father said, candidates should release several years of returns, because one year could be a fluke. President Obama, Vice President Biden and nearly every other candidate in recent memory has met that test, but Mitt Romney continues to fail it.”    

Why Stef, you people don't get to sit in judgment of Romney, you know.

Funny part is the Romneys didn't take all the deductions they could of on Mitt's charitable giving, as accounting firm PWC explains:

The Romneys’ generous charitable donations in 2011 would have significantly reduced their tax obligation for the year. The Romneys thus limited their deduction of charitable contributions to conform to the Governor's statement in August, based upon the January estimate of income, that he paid at least 13% in income taxes in each of the last 10 years.

So the Romneys could have paid even less taxes, but they chose not to because of politics.

Better part, when Mitt loses in November, he can amend his tax return and get his lower tax rate back.  He has until Dec 31 to do that.

Absolute best part?

When Mitt Romney released his official 2011 tax return Friday, the GOP presidential candidate seems to have inadvertently called the United States a foreign country.

“If you have a foreign address,” the tax return instruction reads, “also complete spaces below.” In the space below, under “foreign country name,” Romney’s form reads “USA.”

The mistake was likely accidental, but the Harry Reids of the world must be asking themselves: Did Romney think his local address was in Switzerland?

This is now bordering on comical.