You do not avoid income taxes by depositing oversees (caveat, there are deductions from your U.S. tax liability for taxes paid to foreign governments, and for those LIVING abroad, but that’s not exactly avoid taxes).

http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/International-Taxpayers/U.S.-Citizens-and-Resident-Aliens-Abroad

Income to U.S. taxpayers is subject to tax, no matter where earned. People who use foreign accounts and don’t report the tax due on income are engaging in tax evasion (the illegal understatemement of a valid liability), not tax avoidance (the legal ordering of one’s affairs so as minimize tax liabilities)

You write: “In any case, why is better to earn your income overseas but not store it there?”

Are you suggesting that Obama should not have taken royalties from his book sales overseas? Obama is accountable for many sins, but I do not blame him for earning income from overseas book sales, and taking a lawful deduction for the foreign taxes he paid thereon. (Of course, that is not a recommendation of Obama’s books.)

It would be another thing entirely for him to deposit his overseas earnings in foreign bank accounts so as to avoid paying US taxes on his future returns.

“Mr. Gasper,

Isn’t most likely that the Obamas’ foreign income is from overseas sales of the president’s books?”

It is not indicated in the released portions, but I suspect based on the proportion of income that is the case. In any case, why is better to earn your income overseas but not store it there?

Otherwise, I agree. Romney ran the campaign like he was pitching a b-school case, calm and collected, Obama like he was pitching the OJ jury.

In any event, if Obama does have overseas bank accounts, wouldn’t the Romney people have been smart enough to raise that point when Romney was being attacked on this issue? One would think so, but maybe they weren’t. In either case, the Romney people were pretty clueless – par for the course among GOP politicians and operatives.
It does seem rather absurd that, as appears from Romney’s reaction when the issue was brought up, that it had never occurred to him that putting his dough in overseas accounts could be used against him in the campaign.

I asked a retired dude why he voted for Barry and he said because Barry’s Obamacare meant free healthcare. I told him that Obamacare was going to cost at least 10% more right off the bat and then there were those nasty ‘death panels’, and a couple of dozen tax hikes, all of which is going to screw we fat and obnoxious ‘boomers.’ He reiterated that Obamacare was ‘free.’
This is why we have a social democracy- stupid, very stupid, Americans (and those that taught them).
Buy ammo!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-froomkin/suskinds-confidence-men-r_b_1123660.html

Enjoy.

But, if you’re interested in understanding the actual way the financial world works you could not do better than by starting here:

http://www.aei.org/article/economics/private-equity-is-a-force-for-good/

And if the scales fall from your eyes sufficiently and you might actually consider points of view untainted by the class based Xenophovia that is the flavor of the day, you may want to follow up by reading this:

http://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Common-Sense-Economy/dp/0465022529/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1352928920&sr=8-1&keywords=Basic+Economics

Or, instead of all of this link slinging maybe you might try posing a argument by yourself that might actually contribute to the otherwise very thoughtful exchanges that are the distinction of this particular website.

Personally I would prefer you do the latter.

Thank you for the link. Unfortunately, however, it illustrates my previous post’s assertion about lack of common sense. To wit, when you come across an article that deploys this kind of contrained, dispassionate analysis:

“Mitt Romney, it turns out, is the perfect frontman for Wall Street’s greed revolution. He’s not a two-bit, shifty-eyed huckster like Lloyd Blankfein. He’s not a sighing, eye-rolling, arrogant jerkwad like Jamie Dimon. But Mitt believes the same things those guys believe: He’s been right with them on the front lines of the financialization revolution, a decades-long campaign in which the old, simple, let’s-make-stuff-and-sell-it manufacturing economy was replaced with a new, highly complex, let’s-take-stuff-and-trash-it financial economy.”

You’re probably NOT getting a terribly edifying view of the nations state of affairs.

However, if you want to play dueling links I can recommend the following article by that conservative fire breathing

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/greed-and-debt-the-true-story-of-mitt-romney-and-bain-capital-20120829

It does seem rather absurd that, as appears from Romney’s reaction when the issue was brought up, that it had never occurred to him that putting his dough in overseas accounts could be used against him in the campaign.

Sorry, the electorate is not made up of readers Tocqueville, Strauss, Claremont Review, and National Affairs. If you want to win, you have to anticipate what is going to hurt you with your marginal voters and be ready to defend yourself, whether or not an informed, rational person would pay any attention to the matter in question. Romney seems to have thought he could just coast into the White House by pointing out that the economy’s still bad, repeating 30-year-old Reaganite platitudes, and convincing people that he’s not a robot. As a result, we are now stuck with Obamacare and Dodd-Frank. Great strategy.