Kerry pledges to end island's 'creed of greed' within 500 days [Bermuda tax shelters]

The president can't introduce bills. Only Senators and Representatives can introduce bills.

Presidential hopeful John Kerry on Monday called himself the only Democrat in the race who hasn't "played games" on the abortion issue.
Kerry, campaigning for votes in New Hampshire's leadoff primary Tuesday, repeated his pledge to appoint to the Supreme Court only those who would support abortion rights.
Each of the seven major candidates for the Democratic nomination supports the right to abortion. President Bush, however, supports abortion only in cases of rape or incest or when a woman's life is endangered.
Kerry's closest competitor, Howard Dean, has said he would choose judicial nominees who support constitutional privacy protections, which includes abortion rights. Their rival Dennis Kucinich also holds that view.
"I'm the only candidate running for president who hasn't played games, fudged around," said Kerry, a Massachusetts senator. "If you believe that choice is a constitutional right, and I do, and if you believe that Roe v. Wade is the embodiment of that right ... I will not appoint a justice to the Supreme Court of the United States who will undo that right."

Er, I thought Kerry was a Senator, one of the privileged few who can actually advance legislation to do what he proposes. Dereliction of duty on your part, Senator Kerry?

An off-shore tax shelter
Documents obtained by the Globe detail John Kerry's 1983 investment of between $25,000 and $30,000 in offshore companies registered in the Cayman Islands. The document below, signed by Kerry, shows his pledge to purchase 2,470 shares of Peabody Commodities Trading Corp. through Sytel Traders, registered in the Caymans.

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Hey, moron! Messing with corporate profits mess with my 401(K)!!

So Kerry is going to outlaw offshore tax shelters, but in the meantime, he's been busy using them for his benefits.

No character issues here, just move long :-)

Former Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski and the firm's former chief financial officer Mark Swartz are currently on trial in Manhattan Supreme Court accused of looting the Bermuda-based conglomerate of $600 million through unauthorised pay and illicit stock sales.

I find it interesting that the author decided to include this information in the article, even though it has absolutely nothing to do with the issue of companies moving their corporate offices overseas. If John Kerry really wanted to keep these companies for doing this kind of thing, he had plenty of chances to go about fixing the U.S. tax code as a U.S. Senator. Tyco didn't move their headquarters to Bermuda to avoid paying U.S. taxes on their U.S. operations -- they moved there to avoid paying U.S. taxes on their foreign income under an idiotic part of the U.S. tax code that would have effectively forced them to pay taxes twice on their foreign earnings.

Kerry said he abandoned his upfront investment of between $25,000 and $30,000 and did not claim any tax benefit from the loss.

"I did not want to file an income tax return as a public person that I thought could have been subject to question," Kerry said.

He also did not cite the investment in his financial disclosure statements filed with the US Senate, and only a fragment was in his Massachusetts statement of financial interests for calendar year 1983, when Kerry was lieutenant governor.

Kerry and aides who reviewed his holdings at the time of the disclosure filings said he fulfilled all his reporting obligations. Kerry said he had bailed out of the deal before the filing date for the Senate disclosure.

But records obtained by The Globe show a lot went undisclosed about the complex scheme, which he entered six weeks before he became a candidate for US Senate in January 1984, and, by Kerry's account, broke off before May 31, 1984, the date he chose for filing a report on his personal finances to the Senate.

In a heated Senate Democratic primary battle with US Representative James M. Shannon and two other candidates, Kerry sought and received a 16-day extension of the normal May 15 deadline for Senate candidates to file their financial reports.

Kerry said he does not recall why he asked for what he called "the routine extension" but does not believe it was tied to the tax shelter. Under rules for Senate candidates, he was required to disclose all assets and liabilities held at filing time.

For the next year, when Kerry was a sitting senator, he did not report the investment. Unlike candidates, senators must report all financial transactions exceeding $1,000 in the preceding year. Kerry campaign counsel Marc Elias said Kerry's abandonment of his investment did not constitute a reportable transaction -- "purchase, sale, or exchange" of an asset -- under the Senate's guidelines.

"My understanding is that the shares were returned to the promoter; that he was no longer going to take advantage of the investment," Elias said. "He simply unwound the transaction."

The Senate's Select Committee on Ethics oversees the reporting system, and can levy fines for "knowing or willful falsification of information."

Kerry said he did not make an effort to conceal the investment during the Senate campaign.

In two interviews with the Globe, Kerry's recollection of the investment was sketchy. He said he could not recall many details of the deal or what specific steps he took to terminate it, except to say he believes he "canceled" it in March or April 1984. He said he has kept no documentation.

Kerry's only disclosure concerning any aspect of this financial misadventure was in his statement of financial interests, filed with the State Ethics Commission in May 1984, covering calendar year 1983. Kerry said he owned stock that year in a company called Ginvest Inc. An Oct. 26, 1984, story in the Globe described Ginvest as "an investment that failed."

But records kept by a Kerry aide at the time and reviewed by the Globe indicate Kerry also owned stock in another company, Peabody Commodities Trading Corp., as part of the transaction. In an agreement he signed on Dec. 13, 1983, Kerry pledged 2,470 shares he held in Peabody Commodities as collateral for a $238,527.40 promissory note he signed the same day to Sytel Traders Ltd. Sytel was to lend that amount to "Gin Vest Inc." to cover forward contracts to buy and sell unspecified commodities.

Kerry has never reported a stake in Peabody Commodities, which, like Sytel Traders, was registered in the Cayman Islands, according to records of the Register of Companies office in the Caymans, where strict secrecy rules conceal corporate ownership interests. Peabody Commodities was registered eight days before Kerry's transaction, the records show.

Kerry did not dispute the authenticity of the documents, but he dismissed them as "paperwork" that did not reflect real assets, actual debt, or liability arising from the complex scheme.

"There was no real collateral that I was involved in; none whatsoever," Kerry said. "It was paperwork. That's why my accountant said it sucked. . . . I was never, ever on the hook for any number in that note. Nobody ever noticed me to that effect nor was that in fact the legal reality. I completely walked away from my own personal investment. End of issue."

Kerry declined to permit an interview of his accountant, whose advice proved to be sound. In ensuing years, the Internal Revenue Service cracked down on tax shelter abuses, including some involving Sytel and its subsidiaries, designed to avoid what was then a high marginal tax rate of 50 percent on ordinary income by taking advantage of the lower 20 percent rate on income gains from long-term capital investments.

Some Sytel investors who claimed tax deductions were caught in IRS audits and paid steep penalties, according to Joe Vaulx Crockett III, a Nashville lawyer who represented about 30 Sytel clients in US Tax Court. The IRS questioned whether there were assets underlying the options, or forward contracts, being bought and sold, Crockett said...

Although two of the companies involved were based offshore, Kerry said he was unaware of a Cayman connection. The first sentence of the pledge agreement that Kerry signed, however, describes Sytel Traders as "a corporation duly organised (sic) and existing under the laws of the Cayman Islands."

"I didn't look at it. I honestly didn't," he said. "[I was] never aware of that, and I would have opposed that."

Asked if Ginvest was created specifically for his investment, he replied: "I think that's correct. I think they created some entity that became called whatever, you know, name they gave it, which became the conduit or the holding company for whatever transactions were that generated the `loss,' income, depending when and how they bought what they did, and they were the ones who knew how to do it."

http://www.boston.com/globe/nation/packages/kerry/061903b.shtml

Has he cleared this with the UN? Or would this be like his vote on Iraq...he says, he votes it, but he really doesn't mean it.

Aren't the Clintons rumored to have $$$ stored off shore?

Has he cleared this with the UN?

He's negotiating with Kofi Annan as we speak, LOL!

Kerry is just as slimy (if not ever more slimy) than Clinton.

"corporate Benedict Arnolds"

Kerry calls someone a "Benedict Arnold"? Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!

creed of greed?? JHFC, what is with these lefties and their childish slogans?

"I think it's time we had a President who will provide the only real economic security: good jobs. A President who will provide middle class payroll tax relief to get money in the pockets of workers who will spend it, not more tax giveaways for those at the top to stimulate the economy in the Cayman Islands and Bermuda. A President who will index the minimum wage to inflation and raise it from a 30 year low, not increase the tax burden on the middle class and those struggling to join it."-- John Kerry, March 27, 2003

http://www.johnkerry.com/communities/workers/

When I read the headline and saw "the island 'creed of greed,'" I naturally assumed he was talking about Martha's Vineyard. If there ever was an island owned by the wealthy class, prohibiting everyone else, and based on greed, it's Martha's Vineyard.

Has Kerry made his (and Terry, her's) tax returns available for public comment? As a good Republican, Heinz would have tried to shelter his money any way he could. I know Terry wants to spend it on the poor and helping all those people in the terrible shape that Teddy and Terry keep talking about, but she, too, must have sheltered something.Does she have some foundation that owns property in Martha's Vineyard or Bermuda that she leases back, for example?

remember this was long before he was Mr. Heinz Kerry.

Why doesn't any of this surprise me?