Wednesday Night Charts & Graphs: Historical Precedents for Tax Returns

Are we all in agreement now that this tax return issue is becoming bigger and bigger the longer and longer that Mitt Romney refuses to disclose his financial past? Even conservatives are saying that now, and while I used to figure he was simply being an ass, now it really seems like he’s hiding something significant. And being an ass. Does the Obama campaign know what it’s talking about when they suggest that Mittens might have avoided paying any taxes at all in 2009?

BUSINESS WEEK: As a member of the ultra-rich, Romney probably wasn’t spared major losses [in 2008]. And it’s possible he suffered a large enough capital loss that, carried forward and coupled with his various offshore tax havens, he wound up paying no U.S. federal taxes at all in 2009. If true, this would be politically deadly for him. Even assuming that his return was thoroughly clean and legal—a safe assumption, it seems to me—the fallout would dwarf the controversy that attended the news that Romney had paid a tax rate of just 14 percent in 2010 and that estimated he’d pay a similar rate in 2011.

Does the Romney campaign know what it’s doing by stonewalling? It’s getting too late to release them now and defend a cover-up in addition to the initial tax avoidance.