CNN has been running a headline today saying Mitt Romney, during his vetting of possible running mates, requested tax returns for 10 years!! Unbelievable. That man’s arrogance knows no bounds.
CNN has been running a headline today saying Mitt Romney, during his vetting of possible running mates, requested tax returns for 10 years!! Unbelievable. That man’s arrogance knows no bounds.
According to ConstitutionFacts.com,
And yet, our federal and state governments have voluminous, even massive amounts of laws and regulations on the books, not least of which is the much maligned but apparently immortal tax code. These bureaucratic regulations have long been molded by oligopolies and the wealthy through political influence to benefit themselves and I believe this is even accelerating. Please consider this example to contrast with candidate Romney’s wealth which is safely stashed in overseas secret accounts.
As trustee of a Special Needs Trust (SNT) for my 62-year-old mentally handicapped sIster I have been managing it for 20 years now, including its annual form 1041 federal taxes which are unbelievably complex. It was originally funded by our mother’s modest estate when I chose to invest it that way. An SNT is a method of creating a fund that is to be used exclusively to enhance the quality of life for someone like her beyond bare food, clothing and shelter, this being desirable because in order to qualify for Medicaid and group home benefits she is not allowed to have any substantial assets of her own. She must personally be essentially destitute. This year the state of Oklahoma decided to audit me as trustee and demanded that I submit a record of trust expenditures for a full calendar year. They demanded and I supplied a list of all expenditures, all receipts, and all financial statements of the trust including its investment statements.
I have sent them everything they asked for, 27FAX’ed pages, except for the investment information which I feel is frankly none of their business. It’s not their money, it’s not my money, and it’s not my sister’s. It is money legally partitioned for the specific purpose of making her life a little better than it otherwise might have been. I am now awaiting their verdict and wondering if they are going to lower the boom on me somehow, perhaps because the trust bought my sister a cake for a birthday party at her group home. After all, that was “food” and maybe that’s technically a violation of the rules. I was told in writing that if I didn’t comply fully with their demands my sister’s medical benefits would be terminated as of October 1st, 2012. And of course I suppose they could terminate her medical support because of withholding the investment information, but there is a hearing process and I requested that if they balk. I’m going to fight this. I mean, after all it doesn’t matter whether some kind of food or shelter or clothing support comes from the trust or from my personal funds or any other source, it would still constitute outside funding supplanting government funds, so what’s next – are they going to audit my personal finances?
I suppose I could have taken my mother’s estate and opened a Cayman Island secret account and the government of Oklahoma would know nothing about any assistance. But I’m not Mitt Romney and in1992 when my mother died I had no idea how easy it is to open offshore accounts, even if I had been so inclined. I wonder, if Mitt Romney knew about this and if he gave a rat’s behind about me and my sister, would he consider me insufficiently entrepreneurial?
Meanwhile, isn’t it nice that the state of Oklahoma is working so hard to save their citizens’ money? (P.S. – I can account for every dime the trust has ever spent.)
Geez, the hoops we have to jump through just to comply with the tax laws. (And we do jump and we do comply.) When I moved to Colorado, I sold my house in Oklahoma City. Because I’d lived out of state for three of the previous 5 or 7 or however many years (rented the house while I was gone), I had to shell out a 20% capital gains tax its sale. Like it wasn’t sacrifice enough that I sold a fully paid-off house to move to Colorado. I’ve made some unwise financial decisions in my life, but I never shirked or hid my tax debts from those collecting them. Perhaps I should have hired an accountant to tell me how to run everything through an offshore account. I’d be much better off now if I had.
I can’t even think about Romney anymore without raising my blood pressure.