Romneys tax records, should he release?
Splitting off to more political news..
A current running debate in American politics is whether or not presumptuous Republican nominee Romney should release more of his past tax records or not. Romney and his campaign have so far resisted all efforts to release his forms.
The arguments from the Democrats are that he should because there have been speculation that Romney has been stashing his money overseas in "legal" tax shelters to reduce the amount of taxes he has to pay.
The Republicans argue that it is not legally required to release tax records, and that Romney's tax records would reveal nothing of interest to the public.
My take on this is that if Romney has nothing to hide, then he should release his tax records. Romney seems to think that because it isn't required to release them he won't, but given that he IS running for an extremely public office, president, he should show the public who exactly they (we) are voting for. Concealing information about your past shouldn't be the best move when so much for everyone is on the line. If he potentially has a bad history, we should know about it so that we won't make a bad decision when electing our nation's leader; however, Romney doesn't think that way and seems to want us to believe that he has no bad history without proving it. This doesn't seem like a good quality for a potential President, to hide information about his decisions and moral character. So I believe he SHOULD release his tax records, to show that he is a reliable and honest candidate, and by not going the route of Herman Cain (he had allegations of past scandals and ignored them for so long that the ensuing news coverage killed his campaign, even though the end result wasn't that bad. If he had dealt with the situation earlier, he would've still had a strong campaign.)
[b]summary:[/b] Romney doesn't want to release tax records, but I think he should.
3 Comments • Newest first
@crossout3: Well. I did not think of it that way.
And I don't really know much about political economics, or the U.S. to respond with much else. Anything I do say will probably comprise of assumptions pulled out of my ass.
Heh.
@ClementZ Well I do think it is about the amount of taxes he pays in relation to his income. It speaks more about Romney's character than a person would usually think.
See, if Romney pays about 10% of his taxes while he should be in the highest tax bracket, that means that he has invested a lot of money in hiding his money away in tax shelters. To me this speaks of a person who is sly and would try to work any and every advantage to his own benefit. He doesn't seem like a person who would care about the nation as a whole, but would try to use the presidency to benefit corporations. As Bush and Cheney helped the military industrial complex by instigating needless wars and spending extravagant amount of money on them, it seems that Romney would do that same given his background of a single-minded drive for profits.
I don't believe the nation should be run as a corporation, and if Romney is all that he seems to be (extremely profit driven), then I think that should be revealed to the public to be taken as it will.
I don't see why it matters...
Are people going to suddenly decide to not vote for him because he pays more, or less taxes than they do?
And I don't see how taxes relate to him as a person, and his morals. Aren't they a legal obligation?
This is worse than the whole "Obama was not born in America" fiasco.
If he feels no need to release his tax records, and has no reason to, I don't think he needs to.