Haven't you gone away yet?
This might be difficult for you to understand, but as a successful businessman with interests in hundreds of different businesses and ventures, Bill Simon has very complicated tax returns. That is the kind of thing you have to say "I don't know I'll get back to you on". Below is his response, which makes a lot of sense to me.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE April 18, 2002
ADVISORY
SACRAMENTO - The Bill Simon for governor campaign today issued the following corrections and clarifications as a result of recent news coverage.
1. Bill Simon has paid substantial state and federal taxes each and every year, including this past year.
In this most recent tax year, for example, those taxes totaled in the millions of dollars.
2. Some reports either implied or published Davis' misleading allegations that Bill Simon did not pay his taxes since he filed for an extension. There is no basis for such statements or implications, and they are false. Like millions of Americans, Bill Simon filed an extension, but paid his estimated taxes by the April 15 deadline.
As he does every year as a matter of policy, Bill Simon paid 110 percent of his estimated taxes by the April 15, 2002, deadline.
3. All Americans are entitled to privacy with respect to their personal incomes taxes. Gray Davis has again cynically alleged that Bill Simon's tax returns might reveal conflicts of interest, when in fact he knows they would provide NO information relative to financial holdings or sources of income.
Bill Simon filed his Statement of Economic Interest and disclosed his financial holdings. In fact, he over-complied with the law. In areas where the law on what he must disclose was ambiguous, Bill Simon always erred on the side of disclosing more than required. A detailed picture of his financial holdings and income are available to the public, and the press has reported extensively on these holdings.
4. Despite Simon's substantial contributions to the state treasury, Gray Davis has still turned an $8 billion deficit into a $17 billion dollar deficit in just three years.
As a result, the Simon campaign thinks Gray Davis actually governs more like Groucho Marx than Karl.