the cayman islands, either.tell you exactly why somebody would put their money in the cayman islands and might tell you why that person might not want to answer questions about putting money in the cayman islands if they were, say, running for the president of the united states and not running for president of the cayman islands. we have known this for a long time, from the one year of tax returns that mr. romney did release. we know some of his investments were offshore, and we know that offshoring stock? the caymans is one of the things you do to avoid paying taxes. now we have this trove of documents that put into black and white the tax avoidance benefit of mr. romney's money being in the caymans. they thought they put this story out of the news cycle by announcing paul ryan. but that only worked about a day as a distraction before everyone started talking to them about the tax returns. then the topic moved on to todd akin and pregnancy and pregnancy's connection or lack thereof to rape. but now it seems we

they spell out how cayman island entities are typically set up to avoid u.s.nt cayman island laws the entity doesn't have to pay taxes on the islands either. this is legal but makes you wonder why that person might put money in the cayman islands or answer questions about that if they were running for president of the united states and not president of the cayman islands. we have known this from the one year they released, we know some investments were off shore and that is one thing do you to avoid paying attackses but we have the trove of documents at gawker putting in black and white the tax avoidance benefit of what purports to be mr. romney's money in the caymans and yeah, this is the story that the campaign has been hoping to push out of the news cycle all summer long. they probably thought they finally did it with the announcement of paul ryan two weekend ago but honestly worked about a day as a distraction before everybody went back to asking the tax returns. then this week some respite, the news cycle did move on to congressman akin and republican pol

includes the use of quote, blocker corporations, which typically set up in tax havens like the cayman islands course, it isn't exactly news that mitt romney holds investments in tax havens like the caymans. "vanity fair" looked into the cayman activity this summer. the soerkded press reported that romney is between $7 million and $32 million offshore investments. now, romney's folks say in effect you can't learn anything here from this gawker document dump because these files are incomplete. it's like looking through a fogged window and trying to say what's written inside every book on romney's bookshelf. but the latest illustrates what happens when a candidate for president from a major party says over and over again that if we want to know about his financial history, we're just going to have to trust him. because he will not hand over more than two years of tax returns. turns out when you do that, journalists go on the hunt and will keep hunting for information until they find something. for more on the bain document dump, romney's tax dodges and what it all means for the election we're jo

. >> he used to work in the cayman islands.nd familiar. >> you've got assets hidden there. >> we're not going to beat barack obama with some guy that has cayman island accounts. >> accounts where mitt romney hides his money. > reputation of the cayman islands. >> people keep telling us, it's where rich people go to cheated on taxes. >> here is a building down on the cayman islands. >> over 12,000 businesses claim it's business. either this is largest building in the world or the largest tax scam. >> you hear it all over the news. >> it really isn't true. >> john: look at this gao report. irs says cayman officials provide all requested information in a timely manner. >> mitt romney pays taxes on all the money earned from this cayman entities, i would say it would be like pirate heaven, some pirate would go and steal all the money. >> that actually doesn't happen because the rules are understandable. >> john: our laws are so complex even regulators don't understand them. sec investigated bernie madoff six times but didn't stop hi

let's get out of the investments in the cayman islands. >> the blind trust is an age-old ruse, if youu will. if you will. could have said, don't make any investments in any foreign countries, but i did live my life. ♪ it's my life >> the obama-bashing at the republican convention is going to be delicious. you're going to love it. >> it will be pretty wild. it will be potent. >> a little humor always goes a long ways. >> i was completely fine. >> but long-term conservative principles. there has to be a concerted effort to reach out to a much broader audience. >> i need to get 50.1% or more. >> this week is about telling the mitt romney story. >> peanut butter on my buttermilk pancake. that is sacrilege. >> dad always goes through the line first, because he doesn't want to wait for all the grandchildren, pause it tabecau forever. >> she got me one of these three-packs of shirts from costco and they're very nice shirts. >> i've never seen such beautiful shirts. >> this is not all about me. >> read my lips. >> it gets you right here. >> all i can do is be what i am. remember that popeye l

cayman islands is not an aberration. it's how mitt romney does business.w he amassed all this wealth. people keep asking why did it do it? he was running for president golly gee. that's all he knows how to do. i'll bring in an expert. william kohn has written about this for bloomberg etc. we want to talk about how mitt romney has been doing tax avoidance for a long time. bill am i being unfair when i say this is part and parcel of mitt romney's career when you look at all these different things marriott, bain, and his personal life, or is that really how he has put together his fortune in the first place? >> cenk, i really hope your viewers followed closely with what you were saying. you're absolutely right in everything you said. the whole private equity industry is premised on tax avoidance. if there weren't tax avoidance. if there weren't this ability to deduct the interest expense from the p & l and reduce taxes from the corporation made, there would be no private equity industry. it wasn't exist. the numbers wouldn't work. i've done those numbers. i k

luxury yacht full of romney campaign donors sailing around the convention in the flag of the cayman islands and later the movement to amend the constitution to get corporations out of our elections has got its biggest indorsement yet i'll tell you who's joining the fight to overturn the damage done by the supreme court's citizens united decision. you need to know this vice presidential candidate paul ryan opened his speech last night before the r n c by saying this. mr chairman delegates and fellow citizens. i am honored by their support of this code invention for vice presidents of the united states. he got that job what job he was applying for right but that was where the truth telling and he was virtually everything ryan said after that first sentence is a lie or a half truth and what could be the most is on a speech ever given at a major political convention in american history paul ryan relied on a lie after lie after lie to attack president obama and hide the republican party's true agenda which is to turn america into a corporate oligarchy he started with the swap. a lot of guys i we

and yes it was cayman islands five years on its friends have a lot of things going on in the cayman islands yeah there you go congressman chris van hollen thanks so much for being with us the nicer thank you it's on. in screwed news i want to share with you now a very telling interview i had on tuesday with glenn hubbard a man who was the former chairman of george w. bush's council of economic advisors is the current dean of the columbia university graduate school of business and is a senior economic advisor to mitt romney it's a very high likelihood that if romney wins the presidency than glenn hubbard might become the next chairman of the federal reserve or even the secretary of treasury so i want to get to the bottom of is and romney's economic philosophy which seems to be rooted in reaganomics or supply side economics so i had him on the radio show yesterday and this was my first question take a look. at how is it that. after you know if you look if you look at the last sixty or seventy years of history we see that average wages tracked productivity almost. continuously until the

taxes, includes the use of "blocker corporations" which typically set in tax havens like the cayman islands. of course, it isn't exactly news that mitt romney holds investments in tax havens like the caymans. "vanity fair" looked into it this summer. reported romney is between $7 million and $32 million offshore investments. now you can't learn anything here from this gawker document because these files are incomplete. like looking through a fogged window trying to say what's written inside of every book on his book shelf. but the latest illustrates what happens when a major candidate for a political party says over and over again that if we want to know about his financial history, we'll have to trust him because he'll not hand over more than two years of tax returns. turns out when you do that, journalists are going to go on the hunt and going to keep hunting until they find something. and it also turns out that the american people doesn't like it when you do that. it's clear from the latest poll. when asked about whether news about romney's tax returns changed their views. for more on th

they used tax havens like the cayman islands. they used blocker corporations to block the government from getting their money hiding, evading, etc. equity swaps. i'm going to explain that to you in a second. number four, management fee reported as capital gains. i'll explain it right now. equity swaps. what are those? here is "new york times" explaining how the senate looks at this. the major purpose of such swaps is to enable non-u.s. persons to dodge payment of u.s. taxes on u.s. stock dividends. the may purpose of these equity swaps is to dodge tax. why is that important to you? because when he doesn't pay his taxes, you've got to pay more. you pay higher percentage. i can show you the charts that i have before on this show. corporate taxes go down. taxes for the rich effective tax that they actually pay goes way down. what goes up? the taxes of the middle income pay. as a percentage those are much higher. mitt romney, who has $250 million at least is taking his tax load and dumping it right on top of your head. how about poin

guess what a flag that luxury yacht is flying it's not the american flag it's the flag of the cayman islands one of the most and tourist tax havens in the world of course the shouldn't surprise us since vulture capitalists like mitt romney over their allegiance not to the country they were born and raised but instead to whichever country offers them lowest tax rates and something tells me that will be the theme of mitt romney's big speech at the r. and c. tonight. so then what will be joining me now is john nichols washington correspondent of the nation magazine and author of the book uprising john welcome back it's good to be with you tom before we get back to romney or be good to romney were you shocked by all the lies and ryan's speech last night absolutely shocked that that's precisely the word i've been using all day i had prepared a story you do interviews before and i really want to talk about how much republicans like paul ryan and also you know the challenge is to reaching out to america beyond the base you know kind of a classic standard story i had to rip it up basically because t

the government discovered the cayman islands, switzerland institutions there were never reported. so people were getting away with giant amounts of money that they were not turning in these forms on. the government figured we'll never get it unless we offer them an amnesty. they've all been committing this felony of not reporting. if we offer them an amnesty, we might get a bunch of them to report and finally get an accounting of this money. is that where -- is that how the law has basically evolved here? >> it's a little more complicated obviously. you committed a felony if you willfully don't report the account. it's not just not reporting the account. >> provide an example of not willfully. >> well, willfully is proven by if you lie to your accountant and your accountant tells you if you have an offshore account and you said no. >> your defense would be i told my accountant, i don't know how he got this wrong. >> the government has to prove -- in order to prove that it's a felony has to prove that you knew that you had an obligation to report. >> but certainly enough people tho

lots and lots of post office boxes that attend to people who do not live in the cayman islands.lives in the cayman islands is a famous scheme for avoiding paying taxes on that money in, say, the united states. exotic anding a a agrees sif and occasionally shady tactics that he has used to avoid paying taxes. today after telling abc news a couple weeks ago that he would go back and look at his taxes to see what tax rate he has been paying, today mr. romney said he he finally did look and he says he has never paid less than 13% in taxes. he will not elaborate on what he means by that, he will not prove it, he will not release any documentation to back up that claim. he just wants us to trust him that if he were to show his taxes, that's what they would say. >> i did go back and look at my taxes and over the past ten years, i never paid less than 13%. i think the most recent year is 13.6 or something like that. so i've paid taxes every single year. >> in 2002, ten years ago when mitt romney was running for governor of massachusetts, his taxes were relevant then not just on the ques

cayman islands, swiss. to most -- >> swiss bank accounts.words. >> those are the things for most average americans, most average americans think rich people game the tax code. what freaks them out is the notion that there's a guy running for president who sounds like a bond villain or a drug cartel kingpin who is like that's what most average americans think are people who put money in swiss bank accounts or park money in the cayman islands. that's weird. >> october 15th thing is nuts. doesn't matter what the deadline is. i just think they have been totally suicidal in the way they handled this. we will find out on october 15th that he paid a 99.9% mergeable rate for 2011 but that's just going to leave open the question of the other, what, eight years or ten years they're looking for. there's just no way around it. he's just procrastinating. the whole thing, he could have ripped this band-aid off in 2009 and chose not to and it just keeps going on. >> this goes back to the strategy here. we are not talking about the economy. we are talking a

john heilman not long ago about this show, said, you have to say, swiss, islands, cayman accounts. ss islands -- cayman islands, swiss bank accounts, over and over and over again to the american public and it reinforces this narrative, not only is mitt romney a secretive rich guy but a james bond. >> it's both what he's done in the past and what he would do in the future actually with everyone's taxes including his own that i think is what makes this issue so resonant. you have on the one hand the fact he picked a nominee for the vp slot that would essentially eliminate his taxes. i mean, paul ryan has recommended no capital gains. >> szeroing it out. >> that's where he gets the vast majority of his money. actually, his rate would be 0.82% if he went with the paul ryan budget. that's pretty shocking. then you also just have what romney's own plan is, which is to cut the tax rates from millionaires and billionaires like himself. the income tax rates by about 20%. and he says that that would somehow be revenue neutral, but all of these wonks and economists have gotten together and hav

i can't say it is all this talk but there is certainly some about the cayman islands and the swiss bank accounts. >> i understand that is what the democrats and the obama people will do. again, their campaign is not about the big issues that america faces. their campaign is not about the fact that you have 23 million people out of work and half the kids coming out of college can't find work. their campaign is trying to find something so say gee, he had a swiss bank account which apparently was done by the blind trustee. i had no involve innocent in this. some currencies, u.s. current issues and some in foreign ken currency. that tends to be something which investors do. but they are trying to make that seem like it is an unsavory action and frankly all the taxes paid exactly as owed and no tax savings by visit too of having that vehicle. >> chris: finally you are about to become the republican nominee for president. one step away from the oval office. your beloved father george romney tried for this. didn't make it. you have tried for 8 years. i want to ask you on a personal basis, not

. >> mitt romney said thanks to million dollar donors aboard a yacht flying a flag at the cayman islands. 50 attended the event and the republican nominee has come under fire for off shore investments in the cayman islands. abc 7 news will be reporting live from the convention in tampa, coming up on abc 7 news at 5:00 and 6:00. for updates follow him on twitter. matthews abc 7 or on our facebook page. >> and we're streaming live abc news coverage of the republican convention. >> the president continued to reach out to young voters in a campaign stop this afternoon. this was the third college campus speech in 24 hours. and his message is you can make a difference. he won 66% of the vote among 18 to 29-year-olds. >> firefighters made a difficult decision to let a massive nursery fire burn to the ground ground. >> firefighters were concerned with pesticides and fertilizers that were inside. and. >> firefighters arrived about midnight the 50-year-old nursery was engulfed in flames. these pictures from this san jose firefighter carl rose show what they're up against. >> this is creating less

tropical storm ernesto still tropical storm warnings for jamaica, tropical storm watches for the cayman islands. expect it to push its way across the yauch can peninsula and by midweek move -- yucatan peninsula and by midweek move its way closer to the western gulf. expect showers and storms tomorrow, could be spotty off and on depending how fast that frontal system moves. the slower it goes, the more rain potential we have. drier conditions tuesday, 90 degrees, same for wednesday, but the storms are back in the forecast the end of the week. enjoy your week. back to you. >>> forget london. we're taking the edge off with a different kind of competition in california. the prize athletes? weiner dogs. the city of san diego held qualifying rounds this weekend for the 16th annual wienerschnitzel weiner nationals. the fastest 16 out of the field of 400 advance to the next round. it will be held labor day weekend on a horse track. the winner will represent san diego in the national weiner dog race in december. had no idea. >>> now it's time to check in with lindsay murphy for a sneak peek at nissan sp

lots and lots of post office boxes that attend to people who do not live in the cayman islands. lives in the cayman islands is a famous scheme for avoiding paying taxes on that money in, say, the united states. the one year of tax returns we do have for presidential candidate mitt romney shows him having a swiss bank account. here in the good old usa we have an i.r.a. they were set up as a savings and investment vehicle for it convenient to hide money that would be somehow embarrassing. say money that represents the proceeds from some shady business or money that you are trying to shield from taxes. the one year of tax returns we do have for presidential candidate mitt romney shows him having a swiss bank account. here in the good old usa we have an i.r.a. they were set up as a savings and investment vehicle for regular middle class americans. in exchange if there being a limit on how much you can sock away into one of these accounts each year, the government shields the money in that account from taxes. one of the great mysteries of mitt romney's taxes is even though there's ba

the reason you won't put them up is you either didn't pay them or you're hiding taxes in cayman islandaises a good point. it did research earlier. reid is asking him to prove he paid his taxes. in 1971, harry reid became lieutenant governor of nevada, the same exact year, the same exact year, bob, edi amin took over uganda. that timing is uncanny. did harry reid have contact with edi amin? if so, what was said at that time. how come harry reid has not come forward on what went on between them? and edi amin is dead and how convenient is that for harry reid? harry reid got him in power and had him killed. >> eric: i concur. >> greg: thank you. >> kimberly: that was very convincing. >> andrea: mark theisen appears orn our network and said i hear harry reid beats his wife. this is a similar thing. >> eric: a lot of people are playing games with it a little bit. here is the real issue. this is harry reid trying to get mitt romney maybe file a lawsuit. >> bob: do something legitimate. >> eric: file a lawsuit that there are no grounds for. be if he fires a lawsuit he has to bring the tax reco

it has the cayman island's flag, isn't that outrageous, but not a peep. >> i think the press is busyrotechnics of just the event itself. but i think one of the interesting things at having all these billionaire donors down there, in the past the candidate would spend the whole week there. so brian ross helped to answer the question, why is romney spending the whole week in tampa. because he's meeting with the high-level donors. the reason why they're giving so much money to romney now $10 million and $20 million up to $1 million at times because obama wants to shut down their loopholes that will cost them millions. that will save them in the tax bill when romney wins. >> cenk: there is a story of reporting that david koch specifically would give $100 million to get paul ryan on the ticket for him to be the v.p. but if you do a calculation and paul ryan gets his way, and the capital gains which are already low to zero percent, david koch in that four-year term would save $750 million. so there is a lot of money to be made by buying these politicians. they caught up with david koch at

it's manager like 138 active invest pts in the cayman islands. 12 of them. so the idea saying that just trust me, most tax experts will tell you that the cloak of secrecy with these investments in cayman island is what allows for the gamesman ship. . >> there was some rule spending that was certainly going on. >> sorry, ken. we've got to get out of this. i want to thank you both for joining me in this, the latest episode of mitt romney's secret tax returns. the story that's not going to go away. thanks for joining me tonight. >> thank you, lawrence. >> coming up, crazy republican congressman talking about abortion and rape. and one of them is paul ryan. this's next in the rewrite. and a republican center warns mitt romney and the republican party about their problem with women. expression of power... control. [ engine revs ] during the golden opportunity sales event, get great values on some of our newest models. this is the pursuit of perfection. who have used androgel 1%, there's big news. presenting androgel 1.62%. both are used to treat men w