Is Romney Hiding His Mormon Church Donations?

John Heilemann: “The depth to which Romney has dug in his heels has naturally provoked a welter of speculation about what in God’s name is in the returns — and just how bad it could be. That the levels of income will be stratospherically (some would say obscenely) high is taken as a given. That there are some years in which Romney paid an extremely low effective tax rate — lower, maybe much lower, than the 13.9 percent rate he paid in 2010 — is quite likely. And then there is the most problematic possibility: that the Swiss and Cayman accounts that we already know about are just the tip of an iceberg, one that would suggest an aggressive, arguably unpatriotic pattern of tax-avoidance.”

“My own guess, however, is that apart from one or more of these elements, what the Romney tax returns would lay bare is the extent of his donations to his church. In this case and all others, charitable donations are something to be proud of, an entirely honorable thing. But for a candidate who has taken extravagant pains to avoid discussion of his supremely prominent role in contemporary Mormonism, the idea of a wave of news stories detailing the tens of millions of dollars that he has given to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — surely making him among its most generous funders in the modern era — must be a kind of nightmare”