The Obama campaign renewed its attack against Mitt Romney for his alleged overseas "tax havens" with a new page on its website Tuesday, following an article in Vanity Fair that brought new scrutiny to Romney's shrouded personal finances.
"Has Mitt Romney avoided U.S. taxes by investing millions in tax havens?" the web banner asks. "We'll never know, because he won't release his records," it continues. The page shows a map of the world, marking countries where Romney has reportedly kept his wealth.
The Republican presidential candidate bowed to political pressure during the Republican primary by releasing his tax records for 2010 and 2011, which revealed that he paid a 13.9 percent tax rate in 2010 and had a Swiss bank account that was not closed until an investment adviser deemed it a political liability.
Romney has declined to release older records, giving President Barack Obama's campaign fodder to argue that the presumptive Republican nominee is hiding something.
"Until he releases his tax returns from that period, Americans will never know. This raises serious questions," Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said on a Tuesday conference call. "If he has nothing to hide, why doesn’t he just release his tax returns?"
The Vanity Fair article, among other revelations, brought to light Romney's financial accounts in the Cayman Islands and alleged that Romney owns a corporation in Bermuda.
“Vanity Fair’s raising important questions about Romney’s offshore accounts in foreign tax havens, including his mysterious corporation in Bermuda, his funds in the Cayman Islands, and the Swiss bank account he opened," Labolt said. "Mitt Romney’s economic philosophy has always put maximizing his profits above anything else. Even if it means refusing to bet on America and its workers.”
In April, the Obama campaign re-released more than a decade of the president's tax records, a move designed to put more pressure on Romney to do the same.