Everyone's theorizing why Mitt Romney won't release all his tax returns. The prevailing theory seems to be that there will be years in which he paid zero taxes and that this would be embarrassing for a guy who has zillions of dollars and is running on a platform that the rich should pay less.
Maybe that's what he's hiding. Maybe it's something else like claiming George Will as a dependent. Maybe he's afraid that reporters will scrutinize the papers, do a bit of research and discover that he made a half-billion somewhere he didn't report.
But maybe it's a lot simpler than any of that. Maybe he just wants to not hand the Obama camp a pile of papers figuring they'll find something in there they can spin as illegal or unethical or hypocritical. Political campaigns these days — Romney's along with everyone else's — are really good at ginning up scandal out of the slightest oddment. He may just feel "the less they have to work with, the better."