Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., Tuesday renewed his questions about whether Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has avoided paying federal taxes.
Reid had earlier said that a source told him that Romney had paid no federal income taxes through the use of legal tax havens and accused Romney of seeking to obfuscate his taxes by releasing only a year's worth of tax returns.
In response, Romney released an additional year's worth of tax returns, accompanied by an affidavit from his accounting firm stating that the former Massachusetts Governor had paid an average federal tax rate of roughly 20 percent.
However, a New York Times analysis of Romney's return for 2011 alleges that Romney's extensive overseas accounts - in countries like Luxembourg and the Cayman Islands that many consider tax havens - may have allowed him to reduce his personal income tax bills.
The analysis also claims that Romney's offshore investments and the tax avoidance policies of Bain Capital, the company Romney founded and ran for many years, may have enabled investors to sidestep some taxes and allowed Romney and Bain to reap higher management fees.
Responding to the report, Reid said that the analysis "proves that nothing Mitt Romney says about taxes can be taken at face value."
"Instead of owning up to his use of secret offshore tax havens in places like Bermuda and Switzerland to enrich himself, Mitt Romney parsed words to try and convince the American people that he did not benefit from these havens - when in fact, he appears to have made millions from them over the course of his career," Reid said in a written statement.
Reid added, "This is the same pattern we have seen from Mitt Romney when it comes to his tax plan: instead of respecting the American people's intelligence by offering facts and straight answers, he and [vice presidential candidate] Paul Ryan have offered nothing but evasion, dissembling and half-answers."
Reid challenged Romney and Ryan to come up with "real answers" to their approach on tax reform.
"Romney could clear up these issues tomorrow if he would simply release his tax returns and release the details of his tax plan," Reid said. "Instead, he's asking the American people to just trust him."
Reid added, "Romney does not seem to understand that trust is earned - and not by playing shell games with the American people."
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