As the pressure on Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney to disclose his tax returns increases from all sides, speculation as to why he refuses to do so has grown.
Did Mr. Romney pay no federal income tax in 2009? Did he take the amnesty offered to U.S. citizens, disclose an undisclosed Swiss bank account and avoid prosecution? Do his returns merely reveal the kind of aggressive tax planning that allowed a multimillionaire to pay a tax rate of just 14 per cent in 2010?
I offer some alternative theories to explain his reticence:
1. Because of a filing error, his 2006 returns contain all the poetry he wrote in junior high.
2. He tried to deduct the cost of new beliefs and principles for 2011.
3. There's nothing in his filings that would hurt Mr. Romney politically. He is just concerned because his 2007 forms contain a spoiler for The Dark Knight Rises.
4. He deducted travel to the place of his birth – Rhodesia – but never produced the promised memoir.
5. The family dog was stapled to his 2004 returns and it has been some time.
6. Mr. Romney claimed a charitable-donation deduction in 2000 for a contribution of $2.3-million made to the Winston-Moffat Foundation for Research into Methods by Which We Can Correct the Height of Those Fugly Trees in Michigan.
7. There is concern among Mr. Romney's advisers that some of their candidate's opponents may make an issue out of the fact that, much to the confusion and inconvenience of the Internal Revenue Service, all of Mr. Romney's accompanying documentation is engraved on one-inch- thick gold tablets – in French.
8. The 2004 returns reveal substantial retroactive retirement payments to Mr. Romney originating from the East India Company.
9. They're scented.
10. It's all on the up and up financially, but Mr. Romney dots his i's with a heart.
11. Filings show that in 2006 he bought nine copies of Kevin Federline's Playing with Fire.
12. In 1999, he was particularly rich and frankly he doesn't want to appear gauche.
13. He owns Wednesday.
14. His father, George W. Romney, started the tradition of releasing tax returns when he was running for president. And while I'm not saying there are daddy issues at play here, whenever someone mentions the disclosure of tax returns to the current Republican candidate, he gets a migraine, starts to hum softly and outsources something big to China.
15. In the margins of his 2004 returns, Mr. Romney outlined a program that would cost-effectively provide universal health-care coverage to 95 per cent of the residents of Massachusetts and scribbled some sound, non-isolationist economic policy. If any of that got out, he'd effectively be committing Republican political suicide.
16. A single line item in his 2003 returns reveals that he was the one who cancelled Firefly.
17. In 2001, he claimed a deduction of legal expenses for out-of-court settlements after he let the dogs out.
18. He does not understand this thing you humans call transparency.
19. His wife told him that women are not interested in seeing his tax returns. They are only interested in the economy. (He has no way of determining whether this is true without talking to an actual woman – like that is ever going to happen.)
20. He has folded them into a thousand paper cranes to end gay marriage.
21. He chewed them all into a pulp and used them to plug a hole in a dike during Hurricane Katrina. What the hell is wrong with you people?
22. He sold his tax returns to the devil at the crossroads for the gift of song. The devil just doesn't value tax returns all that highly.
23. His main focus is the economy and no there's money to be made disclosing his tax returns. He is considering releasing them as an e-book.
24. His returns are marching with Martin Luther King.
25. He has just moved and he still has a lot of crap in boxes. Why you gotta be such a hard-ass, America?
26. They're just a lot of generalities anyway.
27. His personal finances are irrelevant, as Mr. Romney isn't running based on his success as a businessman. He's running based on … on … oh, never mind.
28. It's just as Ann Romney says: "We've given all you people need to know and understand about our financial situation."
29. That's right, she said "you people" – who are not going to grasp this stuff anyway.
30. He licked them.