Romney under fire over tax returns

By Steve Peoples, New Hampshire - Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Democrats launched co-ordinated attacks against Mitt Romney, intensifying calls for him to explain his offshore bank accounts and release several years of tax returns.

The offensive came as the presumptive Republican US presidential contender privately raised millions of dollars from New York’s elite.

The line of attack, described by Mr Romney’s spokesman as "unseemly and disgusting", follows new reports that raise questions about his personal wealth, which could exceed $250m.

President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign is expected to push the strategy throughout the coming week, underscoring its desire to portray Mr Romney as disconnected from the middle-class voters he needs to win the presidency.

"He’s the first and only candidate for the president of the United States with a Swiss bank account, with tax shelters, with tax avoidance schemes that involve so many foreign countries," Senator Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, said on CBS’ Face The Nation. He was one of several high-profile Democrats who spoke out on TV news shows.

Mr Romney may have unintentionally helped the Obama campaign.

Republican donors driving Mercedes, Bentleys — and in one case a candy red 2013 Ferrari Spider — crowded into a series of closed-door Romney fundraising events in the Hamptons, New York’s exclusive string of waterfront communities on Long Island’s South Shore.

Wall Street bankers and brokerage house chiefs, among others, make the area their weekend playground. Mr Romney’s Hamptons swing follows a week-long family break at his lakeside holiday home in New Hampshire.

Voters are split on whether they trust Mr Romney or Mr Obama more to run the US economy, but a majority says that Mr Obama better understands their concerns.

Mr Romney would be among the nation’s richest presidents if elected. He made his fortune at Bain Capital, a Boston-based private equity firm that has become a key point of contention in his White House bid.

However he has not drawn a regular pay cheque in more than a decade and has instead lived off a series of investments.

But he has refused to release more than two years of tax returns that would outline those investments, breaking from a precedent set by his father, former Michigan governor George Romney, who released 12 years of his tax returns when he sought the presidency a generation ago.

And a report recently raised questions about a previously undisclosed Bermuda-based company included in Mr Romney’s portfolio until the day before he became Massachusetts governor in 2003.

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