|
National Review
Reid’s Glass House
Democratic senators have offshore accounts.
By Betsy Woodruff
August 24, 2012
Good news for Senator Harry Reid: If he’s a little bored while waiting
for Mitt Romney to release his tax returns, there are plenty
of other elected officials — in his own party, to boot! — who merit the
same eyebrow-raising he’s directed at the presumptive GOP presidential
nominee. The Senate majority leader has expressed consternation about
the fact that Romney has some money in offshore accounts, which
probably reduces his tax burden. According to the Huffington Post,
Reid quipped, “Most Americans don’t have the benefit of Swiss bank
accounts or tax shelters in the Cayman Islands and Bermuda.”
And Gawker just published more than 950 pages of Bain
documents related to Romney’s offshore holdings, saying they detail his
use of “exotic tax-avoidance schemes available only to the
preposterously wealthy.”
Some of the “preposterously wealthy” Americans who do use such
“schemes” include Senators Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.), Richard
Blumenthal (D., Conn.), Frank Lautenberg (D., N.J.), and John Kerry
(D., Mass.). That should be music to Reid’s ears, since his
transparency crusade might be a little easier to pull off within his
own party.
He could start with Feinstein. OpenSecrets.org lists her as
the seventh-wealthiest senator, with a net worth between $44 million
and $94 million, according to her latest disclosure forms. And, just
like Romney, she keeps a portion of it in offshore accounts. Her most
recent reports say she has an unspecified amount (at least $1
million) “held independently by the spouse or independent child” in
Coral Growth Investments, Ltd., in St. Peter Port, Guernsey. Guernsey,
a tax haven, is a small island in the English Channel that early this
year drew the ire of a British Labour-party leader for
helping wealthy Brits dodge taxes. The California senator also has
between $500,000 and $1 million in a fund called Cevian Capital II
L.L.C. in Jersey, another of the Channel Islands. According to her
latest forms, that holding generated between $15,000 and $50,000 in
capital gains, interest, and dividends. Feinstein has another $1,000 to
$15,000 in Mauritius, an island nation in the Indian Ocean off
Madagascar that is an up-and-coming tax haven.
Like Feinstein, Richard Blumenthal is on the Senate Judiciary
Committee. Also like Feinstein, he has sheltered funds from taxes in
the past — $15,000 to $50,000 in a hedge fund held by his wife in the
Cayman Islands, to be exact. That might not sound like a huge number,
but his most recent disclosure forms say he made $50,000 to $100,000
from the fund in capital gains, dividends, and interest. A Blumenthal
staffer said the fund was sold at the end of April 2011, an action
taken after the time frame covered by his most recent available
disclosure forms.
Lautenberg appears to be in a similar situation. The New Jerseyan is
the fifth-wealthiest senator, with a net worth that, in 2006, was six
times the Senate’s average. His most recent forms show that
his wife’s family has between $500,000 and $1 million in Port Louis,
Mauritius. The money is in a real-estate private-equity fund that does
its actual investing in India, and the earnings it generates are
subject to taxes, as one of his representatives told National
Review Online.
“The Senator’s wife’s family trust invested in a real estate fund that
is fully transparent with a website and a reputable board of directors,
and income on the investment is taxable,” said the senator’s
communications director, Caley Gray…
Read the rest of the article at National Review
|
|
|
|
