Paul Ryan’s Latest Whopper: Oops, I ‘Overlooked’ 20% Of My Income

Ryan’s latest whopper: Oops, I ‘overlooked’ 20% of my income (Updated) (Daily Kos, Sep 22, 2012):

From the NYT article on Romney’s newest tax info release:

In an amended return also released Friday, Representative Paul D. Ryan, Mr. Romney’s running mate, disclosed that he and his wife had initially failed to report $61,122 in income from 2011. He said the failure was inadvertent. The change raised their total income to $323,416 and increased their taxes by $19,917 to $64,674, or 20 percent of adjusted gross income.They owed a penalty of $59 for the original underpayment. The Ryans explained that they had overlooked their income from the Prudence Little Living Trust. Mrs. Little, who died in 2010, was Mrs. Ryan’s mother.

Yup. I overlooked that $60K, almost 20% of my income. $60K here, $60K there, how am I supposed to keep track of it? Who can remember every penny? Besides it came from some obscure source I’d never remember … what was it again? … oh yeah, your Mom’s trust.Or maybe, just maybe, what I overlooked was the fact that I would be the vice-presidential candidate and wouldn’t be able to count on the trust income going unnoticed and unreported.

Sorry, no time for questions, got to run another sub-3-hour marathon.

(As Paul Krugman has always called him: the flim-flam man.)  (Updated below)

Update: Someone in the comments (sorry, now I’ve lost track of who) pointed out that you can find the amended return online (you can find it here), and that it was filed in May — May 23 to be exact.  Friday was the day the amended return was released/announced publicly according to the Times, not the day it was amended. So it was only about 5 weeks late, which explains the tiny penalty. Makes it sound possibly more innocent …

But on the other hand, Scott Wooledge in the comments points out that two weeks later, on June 6, according to USA Today,

While being vetted by Mitt Romney’s campaign, GOP vice presidential hopeful Rep. Paul Ryan amended two years of his financial disclosure statements to add an income-producing trust worth between $1 million and $5 million that he had previously neglected to report.

Two years of covering it up, until the VP vetting … makes it sound a lot less innocent …And Kerflooey points out that the LA Times reported the amended return at the time of
the initial release of Ryan’s returns in August.  Which makes it look like the NYT was wrong to say the amended return was just announced Friday??

Them’s the updates … thanks all

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