Again, no. Doesn't work like that. Bain issues him a W2 form to include his salary plus any bonuses, his interest income is reported as such on another form and his tax accounts use those forms to files his returns. Individual deals made by the company are not included as line items on his PERSONAL returns.
To see who made how much on any particular deal the COMPANY made, you have to take a peek at the company's returns.
Actually you are not correct ClownBoy... Bain Capital will likely have been formed as a investment management company. This could take many actual forms, but most likely is a partnership or LLC. Most investment banking companies pay their partners a modest salary $100-200K per year, with the real earnings coming from year end bonuses or partner distribution of earnings AND direct participation in the firm's various funds. These firms raise money from investors such as pensions and college endowments, parking them in funds which have specific investment target criteria and life. Bain earns money from managing the funds, including selecting and managing the investments. Bain probably managed a dozen or so of such funds. Bain Capital partners and employees would be paid from the management fee revenue, with that likely reported on a W-2, but that is not where Bain partners made their serious money.
The serious money made by the partners of Bain will have been from actual participation in the funds. To some extent they may have made personal investments in the funds, but more likely they acquired the shares as an earn-out for raising the funds in the first place. They then participate pari passu with the investors in Bain investments. Most of Romney's tax returns would be comprised of K-1's, which are used by partnerships and LLCs to communicate the individual portion of partnership or LLC earnings. He likely would have received several K-1's just from his participation in each of the Bain funds. Moreover, it is not a-typical for partners of investment banks to make individual investments in target companies. The accounting for those also likely flowed to his personal return in the form of another K-1. That all said, the K-1s would not be all that interesting, but a guy like Romney may have had 100-200 K-1s. Most of them would be innocuous, but some of them would be quite interesting. Moreover, the sheer volume of K-1s would demonstrate just how complicated his return and his financial affairs are. Then, to the extent he used personal holding companies and off-shore holdings as a conduit for his investments in Bain and related companies, now you own news-cycles.
Notwithstanding the financial structure he set up to protect him from taxes on Bain investments, how he invested his personal money would likely show up on his return. To the extent he participated in credit default swaps and other egregious financial sins of the mid-decade, Romney would be public flogged and probably rightfully so.
Then, someone would be able to reasonably extrapolate how much of his wealth is off-shored. If much of his wealth is outside the US (which is likely), it would be pretty easy to filet the whole notion that giving tax cuts to the very wealthy works its way back into our economy, as he would be a great example of the fatal flaw in that theory (the money actually leaves the country and does America little good). This could undercut any serious argument to extend tax cuts on upper incomes, and certainly destroy any discussion of further cuts.
Then, of course, there is the simple question of effective tax rate, which is well documented as being no greater than 15% and probably less.
No matter how you slice it, the Romney tax returns are red meat for the Dems. It would be pretty easy to pick them apart and have a field day with them in the public forum. I don't blame him for trying to weather the criticism. Its better to let people speculate than show them the truth and remove the doubt.
