Report: Romney Avoided Taxes, Profited From Offshore Accounts

A new report released Monday night reveals that Mitt Romney used offshore accounts to avoid taxes and fatten his bank account.

The New York Times reports that several funds created by Bain Capital — the private equity firm Romney founded — were set up offshore in the exotic Cayman Islans with controlling interests in foreign companies.

According to the Times, “Had those funds been set up in the United States, the Romneys and other American investors would probably have been subject to certain federal taxes for their ownership of ‘controlled foreign corporations.’ Setting up the funds in the Caymans allowed them to avoid those taxes.”

Romney, as the Times uncovers, also earned money via his individual retirement account (IRA) in a complex scheme called a “blocker” corporation. A blocker corporation is an offshore corporations used as “a conduit for money for these institutional investors, as well as foreign investors looking to avoid United States taxes.”

Romney’s IRA is worth anywhere from $21-$102 million, but the value cannot be verified since the candidate refuses to release detailed tax records to the public.

Romney was recently secretly recorded deriding the “47 percent” of Americans he falsely claimed don’t pay taxes but felt “entitled” to things like “food.”