Barack Obama's Tax Shelters

I can't ever recall as much class warfare in American politics. The Democrats always wage it, but this year the left is so utterly bankrupt that all they can do is hit Republicans as vicious, undeserving throwbacks to the (so-called) economic obscenities of the Gilded Age. 

Exhibit A this afternoon is the lead editorial at today's New York Times, "Mr. Romney's Financial Black Hole" via Memeorandum. Folks can read it all at the link. The editors really go off on Romney, attacking him for the alleged moral transgression of not releasing even more tax returns, and especially for his financial portfolio, which includes a number of offshore investments designed to reduce tax liability (a tax strategy that any good tax adviser would recommend). But for all the editorial's outrage and bluster (which zeros in on Romney's lingering ties to Bain), here's the key passage:

Firms like Bain park money in the Caymans because the islands have no taxes on capital gains, profits or income for foreigners. But just because it’s legal doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do.

Checking that Memeorandum thread, we see the radical lefties are all up in knots about this, as usual. The problem, of course, is the rank hypocrisy of the New York Times and its progressive minions. If folks want to call out presidential candidates for their tax avoidance strategies, then they should at least be fair and balanced about it. While President Obama enjoys far less wealth than Romney, he's clearly not ashamed of employing the same kind of tax avoidance schemes as the largest of the large private equity firms. See, for example, the Washington Free Beacon from April, "Obama Family Tax Shelter: First Family Transfers Wealth, Avoids Taxes:

President Obama and his wife, Michele, gave a total of $48,000 in tax-free gifts to their daughters, according to tax records made public on Friday.

The president and his wife separately gave each daughter a $12,000 gift under a section of the federal tax code that exempts such donations from federal taxes.

There is nothing illegal about the president’s taking advantage of this tax shelter, but it does raise eyebrows given that he has lamented the myriad tax exemptions used by the wealthy—“millionaires and billionaires” like himself—to pay less in taxes. He has yet to propose a comprehensive plan to reform the byzantine tax code.

The Obama’s tax return indicates that the gifts, likely for their daughter’s college educations, began in 2007, when the maximum exemptible amount was $24,000 per couple. The maximum exemption has since increased to $26,000 per couple.

The Obamas paid a total federal tax rate of 20.5 percent on a gross adjusted income $789,674, which would typically fall within the top federal rate of 35 percent. According to an analysis of the president’s tax return, he may have paid a lower rate than his secretary despite making more than eight times as much money as she did.

His most recent tax proposal—the so-called “Buffett Rule”—would increase taxes on about 4,000 millionaires and raise about $4.7 billion in new revenue per year, enough to cover about 0.4 percent of the projected budget deficit in 2012. Though the rule would apparently not hit the president himself.

Supporters of the rule have acknowledged that the projected revenue from the “Buffett Rule,” which the Democratic-led Senate is expected to vote down, is “not even a meaningful small amount.”

The Obama’s untaxed gift to their daughters will leave American taxpayers to subsidize the college education of the children of the multi-millionaire Obamas.

Again, it's not the amount of money at issue, it's the purported ethical implications of Obama's tax strategies. Not only has the president and his wife taken advantage of tax loopholes to shelter income in the name of the daughters' education, they've taken enough tax deductions to end up paying an effective rate below what the president's own secretary paid. All the stupid talk about "the Buffet Rule" is bullshit designed to mask a radical left-wing program of sticking it to those with more --- especially pernicious since there's not enough income available from the highest income earners to pay for the dramatic expansion of spending required under this redistributionist regime.

And that's just the tip of the hypocrisy iceberg.

Here's Daniel Halper, at the Weekly Standard, "Dem. Chair Invested in Swiss Banks, Foreign Drug Companies, and the State Bank of India." And also from Matt Lewis at the Daily Caller, "Nancy Pelosi made between $1-5 million on Asian investments in 2011." Plus, at Fire Andrea Mitchell, "Obama’s adviser and BFF Valerie Jarrett has a line of credit from a Bermuda insurance company valued between $100,000 and $250,000."

Check back on this. We'll see lots more Democrat tax shelters and off-shore banking hypocrisies as the days and weeks unfold. The trick is for Romney and the Republicans to hit back twice as hard against the left's despicable and completely opportunistic faux outrage.