Capital Bains

Vanity Fair on Romney's offshore thing (emphasis on "sure thing") with tax havens:

"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. ...

"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, and it is predominantly channeled not into productive investment but into real estate and financial business." (How convenient for Mitt.)

And the kicker: "Many of these funds are set up in tax havens such as the Cayman Islands, where a confidentiality law states that you can be jailed for up to four years just for asking about such information."

Above and beyond tax evasion with secrecy, isn't it just a small step for an outfit like Bain to further cheat the American people by parking money offshore, then by "investing" it, with tax exemptions, back into the US through a "foreign" front company?

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2012/08/investigating-mitt-romney-offshore-accounts#pluck-comments