What is Mitt Romney hiding?

Mitt Romney’s money is in the news again this week after an investigative piece by Vanity Fair took a look at his convoluted finances. It’s a complicated article, so let’s unpack it in increments. The first questions that should be answered are about Romney’s IRA. It’s a lot different than most of ours.

His IRA raises two key questions, both of which his campaign has consistently declined to answer: How, despite a $6000 legal limit on annual contributions to an IRA, did Romney’s IRA grow to over $100 million? And did he avoid any U.S. taxes on its enormous returns?

Read the details at this link, but the answer seems to be it’s possible to accrue that much money in an IRA by creative accounting and tax dodging using off-shore tax shelters. Of course, nobody knows for sure. However, these questions could be easily answered if Mr. Romney released his prior tax returns, as has been the precedent since his Dad, George Romney, established it back when he was running for president.

To date, Romney refuses to release more than one year of past returns or to answer the questions raised by his numerous foreign investments. As his Dad said, releasing only one year could be a trick, just for show. So the question remains, what is Mitt Romney hiding? Since he’s running on the premise of his allegedly impeccable business skills, it’s a legitimate question.