or other financial information, but not IRS returns. "Direct" knowledge could even include someone who spoke to Romney, heard Romney bragging about paying zip in taxes, etc., in which perhaps Romney would be the liar.

Q.N.E.D., try to be patient.

one way or the other, as I've heard they teach in law school. We also don't know that the accusation is false because the returns haven't been released. So it remains in the unknown category until the returns are released or Reid's source comes forward and says he or Reid was lying.

Spart obviously meant $100 as a tongue in cheek stand-in for "ridiculously low AGI." Maybe Romney declared $40,000 one year. If you're going to take even the most obvious hypotheticals in bad faith, what are we even doing here?

they've made no legally binding representation about anything. And other rich guys would probably see it as a big plus that they'd make public statements that their clients asked them to make, that said what they wanted to have stated publicly.

Except the hypothetical was from an expert:

The Romney campaign is reporting the percentage of Romney's AGI that he paid to the government, explains Brian Galle, an associate professor at Boston College Law School who is an expert on individual and corporate income tax.

That means that although Romney paid at least something in previous years, it could have been a very small amount. "He could have been paying 13.66 percent of $100 in 2009. He might have paid $13.66," Galle continues.

If you can explain why this expert is wrong, you're welcome to do so. But why should anyone belief your huffing and puffing, which only appears embarrassing by contrast, in the face of this expert's opinion?

is that they believe their own BS. This appears to be a problem with having a captive media ecosystem.

...then he really is an idiot. To pivot from from raw contempt for the majority of Americans to showing that he pays much less in taxes is not going to prove to be a winning strategy.

PWC and Harry Reid may be saying true things simultaneously. 

And MA in particular never said PWC is reporting falsehoods.

Perhaps you could offer your expertise in this area to tell us whether ROmney could've paid a very low amount of taxes while paying a near 13% on his AGI in those unreleased tax returns.

..and Romney isn't going to release them. So everyone is free to speculate to their hearts content within the bounds and at the margins of what can be credibly argued given established facts that are thin on the ground.

the phony burden-of-proof tennis that you and MScott are playing, and that steinerman is playing for real, but losing.

I wasn't trying to "prove" that Romney is a tax dodger in my comment, but assess what evidence the PWC summary provides against him being a tax dodger.

Since everything in the PWC summary seems strictly compatible with Romney nevertheless paying nearly zero in taxes (that's what the hypothetical was demonstrating), I say you've provided "mild evidence" against him paying almost nothing.

However, I'm still of the opinion that the overall best explanation (note: this isn't "proof" and that's OK since we're not in geometry class) for why Romney won't release his returns is that they would show some form of tax dodging (either avoiding the spirit or letter of tax law). 

That's you're one chance to figure out what I've been saying and productively respond vs. call Reid a lying douche/over and over again point out that "there's no proof!" 

coming from the guy who's been using hypotheticals to call Reid a liar. By the way, you've already provided us with a definition of lying that you've used before, it doesn't match your use now in regards to Reid.

he just filed an extension before April 15th, that makes his due date for taxes October 15th. It's very common, I've done it when I've had complicated transactions or when some financial institutions were late issuing tax statements. I would expect that for tax returns as complicated as his are he files an extension every year.

Did you also think Obama was hiding something about the origins of his birth?

Despite voting libertarian, you must actually be a hard-core Democratic partisan.

Anyway, your scenario sounds plausible. 

But as for Romney being so smart, most people who run for president for umpteen yrs would've done more to clean up their offshore stuff and other accounts. 

George Will in a clip I posted talked about how Romney was dogged by this stuff back in his '94 senatorial campaign and is simply amazed that Romney still didn't have the last 10 yrs. of tax returns in shape to release.

So Romney's judgment is already cast into serious doubt on this. So much so, I don't find it that out of the range of possibility that he's like thousands of other millionaries in this country who basically paid no taxes for many years in a row. Or that he was a party to an amnesty deal.

But if I had to guess, I'd go with the scenario you outlined and arrived at using birther logic. 

And since you made that charge, you must now prove it, or risk stinerman's, BD's, and MScott's wrath.

And when you're talking about "no violations" that's what I meant by "broke the spirit". 

I think we're mostly saying the same things with a different style (and yours is likely superior), other than that I was a bit more accurate on the substance in allowing for literal law-breaking and a subsequent amnesty.

You'll have to allow that that is one reasonable explanation for ROmney releasing so few of his returns.

Those loopholes were deliberately put in by democratically elected legislators who were maximizing their own political self-interest.  It's not like millionaires taking deductions is some kind of unintended consequence, it is the whole point.   Part of the reason for letting them do it is political favoritism, part of it is an honest if mistaken desire to encourage certain types of investment behavior.

We've had the talk about "aggressively exploiting tax shelter loopholes" before,  and I told you that many of the loopholes aren't optional.  For example, paying the normal tax rate on something that could be at the lower capital gains rate gets you a serious fine.

And now TPM (I know you're not TPM and don't necessarily agree with them, but just to show you that Romney would be damned if he did or didn't) is bashing Romney for cheating by not taking the charitable deduction, thus faking a higher tax bill.

Please correct me if I'm doing a Karnak or have the numbers wrong:

Chances that you or I would vote for Romney,  not knowing his tax rate:   0%

Chances that you or I would vote for Romney,  knowing his tax rate:  0%

OK, we're abnormal.  But I would estimate that the total number of voters who would hinge their vote on this issue is much less than 1%,  because 3% is roughly the number of genuinely undecided voters out there,  and most of those 3% as you point out are ignorant of the issue.  Where we differ is that I expect that they will remain ignorant of the issue through November 6,  and probably for all eternity after that.

where Kerry was pushing a platform that would drastically lower his own taxes?

Hmm. What do you mean you can't? That is a difference between now and then don't you think? Well perhaps you don't think so but what you think is irrelevant to how a majority of the population feels about it.

Even for someone who had made such a good living at it for decades, having your profession on your tax forms listed as "gigolo/glorified cabana boy" tends to be a bit blush-inducing.

Is there something about conservatism that makes it impossible to form valid analogies?

if I remember the issue correctly... Kerry had released but his wife's income was still secret? That is pretty much equivalent I think.

Somehow though, and I'm not invested in this since I'm not a citizen, I'm a lot more curious about Romney's returns than I was about Kerry's wife's. I think there are a couple of reasons for that. Mostly because it is pretty obvious that Romney has something really ugly to hide. My guess is some sort of really offensive Camen Islands tax dodge just the right side of legal or maybe a settlement for evasion on for a non trivial amount. The second reason I think is that Kerry was running against such a monstrous character whose lies were so obvious and contemptuous and led to the worst of  degradations of public morality that a little bit of creative tax accounting didn't really even register on the offend-o-meter.

What is really puzzling to me is why any of you would want to vote such a rich man into power. Such as him will never have your interests at heart.

Hmmm....  Interesting theory but the Obama campaign and superpacs will have had many weeks to establish Romney's identity as a tax-evading rich guy who hates the poor.  That storyline has been very effective and if Romney can possibly put a stop to this association, he'd better do it now.  In a month or so, he'll hemorrhage even more votes with little chance to get them back even with a "revelation".  Besides, the question on everyone's mind will be "well, why didn't you release them months ago?" and more suspicion will be raised.

In any case, BD's title is incorrect.  Nothing has been proven except for the details of the 2011 tax return.

But I'd consider it significantly less likely than the alternative explanation that Romney's hiding something.

Everyone knows the challenger's challenge is not to let themselves get branded early and negatively. 

Romney refusing to release most of his tax returns after he was the GOP's nominee compromised that in a major way. 

I don't think you can entirely reverse that negative branding near the end of the election after voters already have negative emotions/ideas associated with you. 

The people running the Romney campaign aren't that clueless - it's likely they're just having trouble making the best of a pretty lousy candidate.

elections don't pivot on just one thing. I think a more likely response would be "If there's nothing there, then why the f(*k didn't he release this stuff months ago?"

But I think the timing for that would be within the next week or so, before the debates.

After the debates, if Romney is ahead it won't be necessary. If Romney is behind, it will look like desperation: Take my returns! Please!

I've been thinking they were going to release them late for maximum effect, but late is from now to the eve of the first debate. After that, the math starts to work against them.

That said, the Occam's razor view is that Romney is just too entitled and contemptuous of mere plebes to accept that he should be forced to reveal his sophisticated financial and tax engineering that the great unwashed would not understand.