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Romney's advisers stressed that he met all his federal tax obligations, provided maximum transparency and did not take advantage of what they described as "aggressive" strategies often used by the ultra-rich. Still, for millions of taxpayers grappling with their own returns as tax season looms, Romney's multimillion-dollar wealth provides a window into an unfamiliar world. His 2010 return shows a number of foreign investments, including funds in Ireland, Switzerland, Germany and Luxembourg. Most of Romney's vast fortune is held in a blind trust that he doesn't control. A portion is held in a retirement account. Romney's advisers acknowledged Tuesday that Romney and his wife, Ann, had a bank account in Switzerland as part of her trust. The account was worth $3 million and was held in the United Bank of Switzerland, said R. Bradford Malt, a Boston lawyer who makes investments for the Romneys and oversees their blind trust, which was set up to avoid any conflicts of interest in investments during his run for the presidency. In 2009, UBS admitted assisting U.S. citizens in evading taxes and agreed to pay a $780 million penalty as part of a deferred prosecution agreement with the Justice Department. The political discussion over releasing Romney's tax information highlighted an argument that Democrats are already starting to use against him
-- that he is out of touch with normal Americans. And it may well have hurt him in the South Carolina primary, where he lost by 12 percentage points to Gingrich after spending several days resisting calls to release the returns. Asked during a round of television interviews about Romney's relatively modest tax rate, Obama adviser David Plouffe said: "We need to change our tax system. We need to change our tax code so that everybody is doing their fair share." Obama planned to talk about economic fairness in his State of the Union speech to Congress Tuesday night. Other Democratic Party voices were less restrained. "He used every loophole in the book available to the wealthy and corporations to avoid paying his fair share," said Democratic National Committee Executive Director Patrick Gaspard. On the other hand, Romney's wife, Ann, had told supporters at a Florida rally on Sunday: "I want to remind you where we know our riches are. Our riches are with our families."
[Associated
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