When Did You Stop Beating Your Wife – Err... I Mean, Paying Your Taxes?

In the nearly quarter century I spent as a journalist, I only wished I could write or say what I wanted against people I didn’t care for (and trust me there were plenty) while never having to substantiate said statements  and skating off with relative impunity.

If only a job like that existed in America.

Oh wait!  It does.

But unfortunately, the title of Senate Majority Leader is currently occupied by one Harry Reid, who last week leveled charges against Mitt Romney accusing the GOP Presidential hopeful of not paying his taxes in 10 years.

Reid claims to have a secret source (a Bain Capital investor) who apparently confided in the skinny Nevadan about Romney’s decade-long avoidance of the IRS. Now in my former life, I would have spent countless hours getting my sources and ducks in a row before a story or statement like that even saw the light of day or else I would have found myself and my publishing company as defendants in a libel case – and rightfully so.

Although on a side note, I’m wondering — as I’m sure others are as well — how an investor in a company would be privy to the CEO’s tax status. I’m a stockholder in McDonald’s and I can assure you that chief executive Jim Skinner does not share his tax returns with me.

But the Senator’s response to his as-yet unsubstantiated claim is that the burden of proof should not be on him but rather Romney, saying that “if his charge is not proven false then it must be true.” He actually took this absurd “when did you stop beating your wife?” insinuation to the Senate floor. In fact, he did it twice for good measure.

If only I had thought of that! What I find even more interesting is that several years ago when Timothy Geithner was being vetted as Treasury Secretary and it was revealed that he actually had not paid self-employment and FICA taxes for four years, Reid and his supporters in the current Romney outrage did their best impressions  of Marcel Marceau.

To date, Romney has released one year of personal income tax returns, from 2010, which showed that he paid an effective tax rate of 13.9% on investment income that year. He has promised to release his 2011 returns when his accountants have completed them.

One of the lone voices of sanity on the other side of the aisle comes from former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, who — when appearing on “Face the Nation” — said that Romney’s tax returns are “not a central issue” in a campaign that has focused on the economy.

Once this nonsense is over, the campaign will then have to focus on the economy and when it does, I doubt anyone will have to lob a slanderous charge from clandestine sources when evaluating the incumbent’s track record on that issue.