Mitt Romney is being forced to revise his federal ethics forms after it was
pointed out that he had omitted several offshore accounts held in
Switzerland, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg and Ireland.
Interest from the accounts was listed on Romney¹s tax return which he
released on Tuesday, but was missing from his financial disclosure forms
that he filed with the Federal Election Commission last summer.
The former Massachusetts governor's campaign admitted what it described as "trivial" and "a minor discrepancy" and said the disclosure would be
amended,
reported the Los Angeles Times .
The campaign said it was making "some minor technical amendments" to the
multi-millionaire's financial disclosure. It said the changes will not alter
the overall picture of his finances.
The Times says it discovered at least 23 funds and partnerships that were
listed on Romney's tax returns that were not included in his disclosure
filings. Half of them were held in what the paper called "low-tax foreign
countries such as Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and Luxembourg."
It stressed that Romney had paid full U.S. taxes on all his holdings.
"The inescapable fact is that by releasing over 600 pages of information
regarding his finances, Mitt Romney is clearly coming down on the side of
disclosure," said Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul.
The Times said the complexity of Romney's finances and the discrepancies
between his tax returns and his disclosures "speak to a broader challenge
facing the longtime private equity chieftain: convincing voters that he can
relate to their economic distress despite the incredibly complex
architecture of his immense fortune."
The paper added, "The fact that a small fraction of Romney's extensive
holdings may not be reported correctly could reinforce an image of the
Republican candidate as elite and out of touch."
Romney's net worth was put at between $190 and $250 million in his financial disclosures. When pressed this week by Univision's Jorge Ramos, he said, "It's between $150 and about $200 some-odd million dollars, I think that's what the estimates are."
His tax returns showed his investments brought him more than $20 million in
each of the past two years, on which he pays taxes of around 15 percent.
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