If you insist.
Oh, please. That was in response to someone who said he’d feel better about Romney if he broke the law to pay no taxes than if he paid no taxes by obeying the law.
So, let me ask you: Would you feel better about Romney if he illegally paid no taxes than if he legally did so?
And just to be clear, this is the post I was responding to:
I feel the opposite way. I’d be more concerned if he paid no taxes and was able to do it legally.
There’s something wrong with a tax law system that lets somebody with as much money as Mitt Romney has pay no taxes while people like me do pay those taxes. I don’t want people who are part of that system to be running the government and that obviously includes being President.
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That poster never came back to respond to me, and I still don’t understand how he could be more concerned if Romney paid no taxes legally than if he did so illegally.
No, of course not - but does that mean you didn’t really mean the part about how it’s not Romney’s fault if the tax code was broken?
I wasn’t the poster, but it seems painfully obvious to me that what he meant was that if Romney can legally pay zero or no federal income taxes while contending that taxes in this country are too high and signing an oath to never ever ever raise them even a little bit for anyone under any circumstances, that suggests a fundamentally broken system. For me, at least, the idea that people who have annual incomes in the tens of millions of dollars ought not pay any federal income taxes is more disturbing than the idea that some schmuck might get away with breaking the law.
In what way would it be Romney’s fault? He’s never held federal office, and so has never been in a position to “fix” it. I wouldn’t blame Obama for the mess the tax code is in, but if there is any blame to dole out, more of it should go to Obama than Romney.
How about this: would you be more concerned that every once in a while someone robs a 7/11 illegally or that there is a law that allows certain people to walk into a 7/11, grab a bunch of stuff, and walk out without paying. And then these same people bitch about how the prices at 7/11 are too high.
I’d be more concerned that that’s a stupid analogy.
Look, Obama takes lots of deductions on his taxes. He doesn’t pay any more than he has to. Should he blow off some of those deductions in order to pay more of his fair share? For instance, he donates a lot of money to charity. But he could easily afford to do so without writing that off. Why are you OK with that? I mean, he’s the one who is saying people like him need to pay more.
I don’t rightly know, just off hand, what deductions Obama does and does not take, but always ready to hear an expert opinion on that. Would that be you, John?
No, he should use the authority we entrusted him with to enforce and revise the tax code so that people of his income level pay their fair share, or at least more of it. He’s at least been talking that way, while Romney is talking the opposite.
Why are you having trouble understanding this? It isn’t hard.
Is Leo Bloom an idiot?
Disclosure: Yes, yes he is.
Is the bear Catholic? Does the Pope shit in the woods?
Cite?
Don’t much care for Romney’s position on this issue, but I’ll check back in a couple hours, see if its more to my liking.
The truth of my propositions may be accepted cite unseen.
I’d be the kind of person who reads the newspapers, and who knows how to google Obama’s tax return.
Thanks for the option. 
That is not the argument. The argument is that Obama is taking all the relevant deductions, paying what is owed, and then looking at it and saying “My god, I, and others in a similar situation, should be required to pay more. I will propose legislation that does that”.
Romney, instead, is making $42 million dollars a year in income, paying 14% on it, and saying “Yep, this makes sense. I think that’s fair and appropriate, and under no circumstances will I ever propose legislation that moves that up even a penny, because to do so would be bad for America”.
If that’s his stand, and he owns it, that’s fine. Reasonable people could make that argument. But if in some years he’s actually paying 8 or 9 or 10% in taxes and that’s really his stand–that people that earn their wealth through complex finance should pay a substantially lower tax rate than any other way people earn money–then he needs to own that, too: if he’s trying to hide it because he feels that reality will be unattractive to his supporters, then he’s running on false pretenses and is a much bigger issue than potential tax fraud.
John, I have tremendous respect for you as a poster, a writer, and a thinker, but I really think you are ignoring a pretty relevant point, and reducing it to “So you think people should just send money to the government?” is unfair.
We’re just going to have to agree to disagree, then. I would be more concerned about someone hiding tax fraud because they would be breaking the law no matter what they said the tax code should be.
My fellow progressives, can i ask you a question?
Before i do, let me reinforce something that should already be very clear. I think Romney would make a godawful president. I wouldn’t vote for him in a million years, i think that his politics generally are pretty awful, and i also dislike the fact that he has awful politics while also apparently having no actual policies that he’s willing to talk about in any meaningful way. It’s also clear to me that his ideas about taxation are completely antithetical to what i consider fair and decent and reasonable.
Now to the question:
I might be missing something here, but can anyone explain to me what we would gain by having Romney open his tax returns for us?
It seems to me that there are three main possibilities here:
(1) That Romney has broken the law and illegally evaded paying taxes that he should have paid, by failing to declare income or by taking illegal deductions.
(2) That Romney has, due to cautious deductions and a sense of fairness, paid considerably more taxes than he was legally obligated to pay.
(3) That Romney has taken all the deductions that he was allowed by law, and has, as a result, paid an effective tax rate that is lower than many people making much, much less money than him.
Option (1) is incredibly unlikely. Romney has been pursuing the presidency, in one way or another, for over a decade, and he and his advisers would have made damn sure that they took no deductions or other tax minimizations that might be legally questionable and jeopardize his political career even with people who agree with his politics.
Option (2) seems pretty unlikely simply because, like most people, Romney isn’t going to hand over extra money to the government just for the sake of it.
That leaves us with Option (3). But if that’s the case, i’m not sure why we need to see the returns. I already know that, as a guy who makes a lot of money on capital gains and dividends, Romney pays a tax rate of 15% on a large proportion of his income. I also know that there are probably deductions associated with property ownership, business expenses, and other financial dealings that he can legally take to further reduce his tax liability.
While the tax code might sometimes be rather opaque and difficult for someone who is not an expert to understand, it is not a secret. Every legal deduction that Romney has taken is something that is written right there in our public documents. My position on what constitutes a fair tax rate, and on Romney’s suitability to be president, doesn’t hinge on seeing his tax returns.
I fully support a revision of the tax code that would require people with Romney’s levels of wealth to pay more taxes. I believe that income based on capital gains and dividends should be taxed like ordinary income, and i don’t buy the arguments that doing this would lead to a sudden and dramatic unwillingness to invest. I think the Bush tax cuts should be allowed to expire, and i think that the top marginal income tax rate should be increased. But i can’t think of a single one of my opinions on tax reform that would be affected by seeing Romney’s tax return.
It also seems that most of you arguing in this thread have, like me, pretty much made up your mind about what sort of tax system we need, and also about Romney’s lack of suitability to be president. So i’ll ask again: what purpose will be served by making the returns public?