Now Obama Ad Gets in on 'Taxless Mitt' Narrative

Did Mitt Romney pay no taxes for 10 years, as Harry Reid has been alleging? Well, the Obama campaign doesn't know, but it certainly implies that's a possibility in its latest ad. "Did Romney pay 10% in taxes? Five percent? Zero? We don't know," says the ad's narrator. "But we do know that Romney personally approved over $70 million in fictional losses to the IRS as part of the notorious Son of Boss tax scandal, one of the largest tax avoidance schemes in history."

That last claim refers to what ABC News refers to as six years' worth of "complicated tax avoidance measures" taken by the Marriott hotel company while Romney chaired its audit committee in the 1990s. But the Romney campaign says the ad's allegations are exaggerated, "dishonorable and dishonest." In another new ad, the Obama campaign fires back at a recent Romney ad assertion that Obama plans to end welfare's work requirements, Politico reports. The Obama ad cites a number of emphatic rebuttals of Romney's claim, including the New York Times calling it "blatantly false." (More Election 2012 stories.)