Mitt Romney Avoided Major Tax Hit By Shifting Stock Of Offshoring Firm

Mitt Romney Avoided Major Tax Hit By Shifting Stock Of Offshoring Firm

WASHINGTON -- Mitt Romney saved himself hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes in 2010 by transferring stock in two companies from his personal account to a nonprofit entity he set up. The stock maneuver included $172,397 in shares of Sensata Technologies, a company now under fire for a high-profile effort to offshore central Illinois jobs to China.

Sensata produces sensors, switches and various mechanical controls. The Attleboro, Mass.-based company is owned by Bain Capital, the private equity firm Romney founded, and it already does most of its work in overseas plants. A remaining factory in Freeport, Ill., garnered national attention when remaining workers began pleading with Romney to exercise his influence over Bain Capital to save their jobs.

Romney had received the Sensata stock as part of a Bain payout; he listed no cost for it on his tax return. By transferring that stock to his nonprofit Tyler Charitable Foundation, he avoided roughly $25,000 in capital gains taxes he would have owed. He also shaved an additional $50,000 off his tax bill by deducting the charitable contribution from his income.

Workers laid off when the Freeport plant is shuttered will be entitled to far less than that in unemployment compensation. Freeport Mayor George Gaulrapp suggested that as long as Romney was giving that $172,397 in stock away, he could have given it back to the workers. "There's about a thousand dollars that could go to each of the workers here set to lose their jobs," he told The Huffington Post, noting the 170 people scheduled to lose their jobs in November when the plant finally closes.

Sensata employee Cheryl Randecker, who will be laid off under Bain's offshoring plan for the Freeport plant, criticized Romney in a video interview with HuffPost on Wednesday. "We continue as Americans to move our jobs overseas, thinking about the dollar ... instead of putting people first like this country was based on," Randecker said. "We actually just want Governor Romney to come and sit down and talk to us and explain why he continues to outsource jobs to the Chinese and other countries. And we need the jobs ... not the minimum-wage jobs, but the good-paying jobs that you can actually raise a family on."