Following up on last week’s post, Romney Refuses to Release His Tax Returns, Even If He Wins the Nomination:  Bloomberg, Romney Plan to Keep Tax Return Private Breaks With Past:

Mitt Romney, a multimillionaire who is by far the wealthiest of the Republican presidential candidates, said he has no plans to release his income tax returns if he wins his party’s nomination, setting himself apart from past nominees in both parties who have routinely done so. …

If the former Massachusetts governor wins the nomination and sticks to his plan, he would be one of the only presidential nominees in the last three decades to withhold his income tax returns. While income tax information is private and there is no legal obligation to disclose it, presidents and nominees for the office have regularly done so since the 1970s. …

Paul Caron, a tax law professor at the University of Cincinnati College of Law, said a refusal by Romney as a presidential nominee to make his income tax return public likely would “become a narrative that sets him up really badly” in the campaign and he’d have to back down eventually.

“It’s sort of unsustainable — it flies in the face of an awful lot of history,” said Caron, who edits the TaxProf Blog. “As one of the wealthier folks to ever run, there’s probably a heck of a lot there that he’s not excited about having analysts be able to comb over, so it makes a lot of sense that he’s wary of doing it.”