This, to me, is the most bothersome aspect of the whole tax issue wrt Romney. I don’t begrudge him taking advantage of the tax code-- I do it, too. I take every deduction I can. But Jesus F’ing Christ… he blatantly manipulated his taxes so it wouldn’t look like he wasn’t paying “too low” a rate. And he even tells us he did it. It’s mind boggling.
There is no need to “guess” here, Sam. His web site tells us exactly why he did it-- so that his effective tax rate wouldn’t fall below 13%. There is no mystery to solve. It’s all about appearances.
Romney paid $1.94 million in federal income taxes last year.
I don’t understand why people complain, the man follows the rules and pays his taxes.
I agree that his stance on taxes is relevant. If he is legally using the tax code, why are his returns relevant?
This is JMO, but IMO, there are no such things as loopholes. There is the tax code. Yes it is large and complex but it is what it is. I’m not eligible for the Earned Income Credit because I make too much. Does that make it a loophole for those with a lower income? I’ve never heard it referred to as such. It’s simply part of the tax code. Saying that the rich use loopholes poisons the well IMO.
Wait, he paid 13% because he said that he’d pay at least 13% right? ISTM that he’s just standing by what he said. I can’t imagine the uproar that would have occurred if he’d paid less and broken his word.
But we know what his tax rate is, don’t we? We may not like it but is seems highly unlikely that PricewaterhouseCoopers would put their name on something that listed the incorrect rate. So assuming that we know the rate, why will the returns help? Honestly, the whole kerfuffle is beginning to sound like a left-wing “birther” issue.
And before anyone accuses me of being a Freeper, I’m not. I’m a Libertarian that is voting for President Obama.
Yeah, well, he also said in the past that if he paid more taxes than are legally due, he wouldn’t be qualified to be president.
And I would agree with that. I think this is what people should be crowing about, not the release of his returns.
Because taxes are paid on a percentage. So the percentage is relevant, not the specific absolute dollar amount.
You should look into how that works and maybe you’ll answer your own question.
I don’t understand this comment at all. The suspicions are that he’s paying a WAY lower tax rate than almost everyone else. Releasing the returns could confirm or debunk the suspicions.
Also, AFAIK, we don’t yet know what exactly is going to be included in the “summaries” he releases. Price Waterhouse would sign off as long as the numbers released are genuine and add up right. But, for example, what if he simply releases a gross income total for those years combined, and a gross taxes paid for the same period? Then it’s possible that some years he might have paid 20%, some years 10%, some years 0%. He claims he was paying a pretty consistent amount every year.
Please note that I am speculating on the kinds of criticisms that might arise, depending on what and how much detail is released in these summaries.
Romney’s $1.94 million is contributing much more to the federal government than Obama who paid $160,000 last year (20.5% effective rate).
But the debate, at least the big picture debate, is about the tax code itself. As you said earlier, the tax code is the tax code.
And that tax code would have allowed Romney to pay less than 13%, had he not made the explicit decision to pay more taxes than he owes. The people who have been arguing that the rich should pay more have not been arguing that they should do so voluntarily (like Romney did on this occasion), but that the tax code should be changed to ensure that the rich have to pay more. That isn’t changed by Romney’s decision not to claim all of his deductions. The fact that he chose not to claim them all, in order to keep his rate above a number that he had previously discussed, still doesn’t change the fact that he still could have paid less.
As i’ve already said, i never thought that Romney releasing his returns was a big deal, and i’ve argued elsewhere on this message board that seeing Romney’s returns was not necessary to an informed debate about tax policy. But i think that he has now done something that’s dumber than not releasing them at all: he has released them, and has admitted to voluntarily paying more tax than he actually owed for no other reason than political expediency. And he did this in direct contradiction of an earlier statement, where he said that voluntarily paying more than he owed would make him unqualified to be president.
Whoever is managing Romney’s campaign should never get another job in politics.
This is an interesting decision by Mr. Romney’s campaign.
It reignites the entire issue of his tax returns and the inequality perceived by many between the very rich 1% and the rest of us schlubs.
The timing is curious. Released on a Friday afternoon and likely lost in the weekend news about… who knows… umm… Snookie’s new baby, I guess.
But, this is essential to remember. This is just a summary. It isn’t his tax returns.
Details are everything. And it is very obvious to me that there are significant details in Mr. Romney’s tax returns that he really does not want everyone to know about.
If there weren’t then he would have released them already.
It is hard to find a rational rebuttal to that.
I don’t know if it’s been addressed a hundred times or not, or how it even works, but is it possible there are any contributions to unpopular 501c’s that would only show up on his taxes?
Speaking only for myself … I have to say the longer he twists and turns on this the more I’m starting to believe that he is cheating somehow.
As I said in the other thread, Romney doesn’t have core principles. He’ll say anything, do for anything, and then take it back an hour later, all to match whatever it is suits him at the moment. So it’s really out of character for him to make a big hard line in the sand - and he chose as is one hard line issue, his tax return.
Romney isn’t afraid about lying about political statements. He lies five times before he gets out of bed in the morning.
He is clearly afraid of showing his returns. This notarized summary just proves the point. He could put the whole issue to bed in thirty seconds if he wanted to. Instead we get even more weaseling.
If you’d ask me three months ago, I’d have said it was just Romney being a doofus. But the more he fights this, the more out of character this looks. I’m starting to think there’s something genuinely bad in there.
I posted earlier some of the potential smoking guns that would make Romney at least look bad. For example, Romney’s IRA from 15 years at Bain is worth between $21M - 102M based on approximately $450k in total contributions. And the $450k was much higher SEP-IRA than a standard IRA that most American’s have. At the $102M valuation, that works out to works out to a 227 times increase. Obviously, Mitt missed his calling in life and should have just run a hedge fund. Here’s a good analysis from Bloomberg: Bloomberg - Are you a robot?
The issue is lack of transparency. IMHO, I think that having the President and candidates being held to high standards should be non-negotiable. Tricky Dick should have tought this lesson.
Ya, and second that “average tax rate” thing. My average tax rate over the past decade is more than double Romney’s, so ipso facto I’m twice as qualified to be President?
He’s rich, he pays very little in taxes, wants to pay less. Not a popular stance when lots of people are struggling.
Moonshot,since it appears that you don’t understand percentages, or feel that everyone should pay the exact same dollar amount in taxes rather than a percentage of earnings, it’s probably best if you just bow out, and stop embarrassing yourself further.
I still think the “Genuinely bad” thing is the potential to expose some relatively obscure (but legal) loopholes and techniques for minimizing taxes that only the very wealthy are able to use.
The very wealthy (Romney’s colleagues) do not want to open a national conversation about how to eliminate these loopholes and techniques.