There’s a certain cohort of people who think it’s a terrible indictment to say that Mitt Romney didn’t pay some maximum possible amount of taxes. Any kind of tax shelter he’s used is called a “scheme” and described in the shadiest terms possible.
When they print stories like this, my only question is, Who in the world doesn’t do everything they can to pay as little tax as possible? If I knew how to set up a Cayman Islands bank account, I’d do it tomorrow if I thought it would save me a dollar in taxes. And everybody who pays taxes feels exactly the same way, including the people who publish the stories about Romney’s tax avoidance. Joe Biden once had some idiotic, Biden-esque riff about how it’s more patriotic to pay more taxes, but you can bet he itemizes the crap out of his return every year.
Of course, these Romney tax stories aren’t for the sake of journalism; they’re just excuses to continue pointing a finger at Romney and saying, “Look! He’s really rich and he’s not sharing good!” But I have to wonder how many people believe that minimizing your tax bill is a scandal in a country where entire industries are devoted to minimizing your tax bill. This post brought to you by H&R Block.