Pavlov's Stepson

Regardless of how this plays out in the Republican primary race, Romney has done the country a great public service by offering up his personal finances as a shining example of all that’s wrong with the tax code after thirty years of politicians fiddling with it to make it more generous to the very rich. Let’s be clear: Romney did nothing wrong. As he said in last night’s debate, he and his wife paid the U.S. government what they owed, and not a penny more. Like many very wealthy people, they appear to have employed a small army of financial advisers and a perfectly reputable accounting firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers, to minimize their tax exposure using a range of methods. Over the years, these methods have included setting up tax-sheltered retirement vehicles, establishing family trusts, making offshore investments, and exploiting one particular tax break that Romney was entitled to use by dint of his employment at Bain Capital.