There's been so much noise about Governor Romney stonewalling calls to release his tax returns and so much commentary about the one he did release, that the anomalies in running-mate Paul Ryan's tax returns have been overlooked.
When Ryan made his 2011 taxes public, he had to "amend" what he and his lobbyist wife had initially reported. It seems that he had "inadvertently" failed to report $61,122 in income. Now sixty grand might be chicken feed for the Governor, but it's a big hunk for the Representative. It raises his total income to $323,416 and bumps up his taxes by $19,917. The sixty-thousand bucks comes from an income-producing trust that he inherited from his wife's mother, a successful Oklahoma attorney. Moreover, on June 6 of this year, Ryan amended two years of financial disclosure reports that he filed with the clerk of the House of Representatives which show that the trust produced income of between $100,001 and $1 million.
So Ryan "forgot" that he had inherited a small fortune from his mother-in-law, and he "forgot" to report to the IRS just about 20% of his income. Fortunately, he remembered both of these facts when he began to come under consideration for national office and knew that his finances would be closely scrutinized.
Ryan is a supposedly a policy wonk, touted for his attention to detail. He's an expert in taxation and expenditure — or so we're told. But he's not, apparently, attentive to his own affairs.
He's also the person who claimed to have run a sub-five minute marathon and to have climbed o-so-many of Colorado's mountains.
So, constant reader, here are your choices. Either Paul Ryan (a) "inadvertently forgot" to include $60,000 worth of income on his 2011 taxes, or (b) he's a untrustworthy, lying scumbag who suits the facts to the situation, and who was hoping to get away without paying his fair share and only came clean when it looked as though someone would notice.
We report; you decide.
(I'm trying to think, if I were the recipient of a $60,000 a year inheritance, which I'm not, whether I could possibly "forget" to report it as income. Nope, can't imagine such a circumstance.)
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