Yeesh. Referring to that amount as “not very much” doesn’t help with the out-of-touch perception. I’d certainly be happy to make “not very much”, if that’s the case. 
How does Romney get out of paying AMT?
You may be right. The WSJ post I was referring to was merely speculating as to whether his continued compensation from Bain was treated as carried interest or ordinary income. That is clearly something that won’t be clarified until the full return is released.
A quick cite:
You will note that he refers only to speaking fees (the “not very much” $340k) as ordinary income and classifies the rest as investment income. Since we know he still makes quite a bit from Bain it seems hard to square that with an overall 15% rate unless he makes a truly staggering amount from investments (which is, of course, possible).
If he uses the carried interest option, this is really, really, really bad. His only hope would be that it’s too complicated to understand. But I don’t think that’s much to pin one’s hope on.
Abso-f***ing-lutely. I think Obama will be smart enough to use Romney as a case study for how the 1% really pay their “fair share”. Not only does it damage Romney, but it allows him to use wealth-inequality as a campaign issue in a way that doesn’t get him tarred a socialist or scare off wealthy donors (well, not as much at least).
His position on taxes starts to look like it might be the product of his perspective.
The thing about lower tax rates for investment income is that it does not apply to most people. The vast majority of most people’s investments are in tax advantaged things like IRAs, Roth IRAs, 401Ks, 529s, primary homes, etc.
People who make 100K/year have about 1K in capital gains. Its really not much of a break.
People who make 500K/year have about 50K in capital gains. It gets more substantial but it doesn’t makea huge difference to them.
People who make over 5 million/year make about 50% of their money in capital gains.
He wants to do it well before or after April when people have their effective rate fresh in their minds.
I’m pretty sure he is getting most of his money from Bain Capital and thats largely carried interest.
Capital gains is above the line. It is not an AMT preference item. Not everything gets baked back into income when determining AMT.
There is acorporate AMT too but I don’t think Corporations ever pay it.
I don’t see why he wouldn’t be earning based on carried interest.
The thing that the welathy donors had a problem with was not his attempts to get rid of the carried interest exception. The thing that flipped them over the top was when his administration proposed that you mgiht also have to pay ordinary income tax rates when you sell your hedge fund to a larger hedge fund.
Given that people in general and conservatives in particular tend to fear what they don’t understand? Yeah, I don’t think trying to make it incomprehensible is going to help him much.
Is he still a partner or a fund manager? If not, he can’t be doing it. He may be getting dividends as an investor, but that’s not carried interest. Carried interest is way of treating what would be ordinary income is long term capital gains. But you can’t be getting ordinary income if you’re not on salary.
Among the people, maybe, but not the party itself. Republican politicians are quite consistent in saying that the rich already pay too much. If this gets Republicans riled up, they’ll be riled up against their own party.
If it’s too complicated to understand, then that just makes things worse for him. That changes the story from “He uses this option and this process, and his income is this type, and if you did the same thing you’d pay low tax, too” to “He uses some magic mumbo-jumbo that real people can’t use to weasel out of paying his fair share like we do”.
I can see where he probably did in the past, but even that cite says “perhaps” he continues to do so. It also implies that even if he does get this benefit, it’s only a part of his compensation. Anyway, I guess we’ll see when (if?) he releases his tax returns.
Maybe there’s less downside for him to keep them private.
Seeing as how he’s only considering releasing this last years tax return, can you imagine the frantic calls he’s making to his accountants right now- “Make sure you figure my taxes to have me paying as much as possible this year!!!” I bet his accountants don’t get many calls like that.
I would love to see how his possibly-to-be-released upcoming tax return compares to previous years.
mn
My favorite part of this is the whole “if its tradition…”
This guy has been planning on running for president for a decade - maybe longer. He’s so damn prepared for running for president that he should get an honorary PhD for all the prep work he’s done. And THIS blindsides him.
For the record, I will not run for president. I don’t want people to dig through my medical history, my tax records, my job record, or talk to old boyfriends (or, God forbid - find my ex husband which would immediately disqualify me on the grounds of past insanity). I don’t want it to be public knowledge if my children are promiscuous or have gotten drunk underage. I don’t need people to know how much I give to my church or the rape crisis line. If I were to decide to run for president, I would expect all those details to become public.
Somehow, Dangerosa, your signature just makes that post perfect.
Also on the God forbid line - having to disclose my message board history, my Tweets where I misspell “milk” when asking my husband to stop by the store, and the Facebook pictures helpfully posted and tagged by my friends where I know I wasn’t THAT drunk.