So then it’s a bit weird that Romney, a guy who REALLY follows the rules to pay no more taxes than are legally required, would vilify on the 47% of the population who also follow the rules and have not tax liability. Hmmmm… guess he’s got a bit of tax-rate envy there or something.
But, as mhendo noted, purely for political expediency. If he weren’t running for president, he would have taken the full deduction.
It wasn’t so much his “word” as a purported statement of fact. If he misrepresented something like this, then he’s not to be trusted.
And, he still has 3 years to amend the return to get the full deduction anyway. So, for all practical purposes, he will be paying 9% tax rate for 2011 by this time next year. He’s just decided to let the IRS hold the extra money while he makes his bid for POTUS.
Based on what has been revealed he will end up filing for a refund after the election, meaning he will really pay 9-10% not 13% as he claimed. He may not be breaking the law in this instance but he is lying about his tax burden.
The man is a gambler, he sits on assets and investments hoping they will go up in value, or buying companies and trading their assets (retirement savings) with debt, paying himself with the assets and leaving the debt. He is not making anything or adding value to society. Out of his winnings from being clever and advantaged he is able to make absurd amounts and is required to pay the rake to the society he takes that money out of. There is nothing morally superior about his contributions to the government or society from anyone else, least of all the president of the United States who makes an incredibly small salary for what the job entails.
I think the idea is that we should go to a poll tax - a tax on people, rather than income, or property.
The underlying thought is that income is a fair measure of how productive someone is. In other words, if someone has a million dollars of income, it’s because he’s produced a million dollars worth of value. It follows that he should get to enjoy the product of his efforts unmolested by government or the unwashed masses.
The idea doesn’t bear much scrutiny, which is why it’s usually implicit, rather than explicit.
Yes. Politicians do things that are politically expedient. This is not news. There will be no film at 11.
In my mind, the reason that he shouldn’t release his tax returns (besides his not being legally required to do so) is that doing so would not gain him a single vote. Those that want to see his records aren’t going to vote for him anyway. Those that don’t care, don’t care.
Here’s what I’m wondering about: If Romney paid $270,000 more in taxes than necessary just for political gain, shouldn’t that be considered a $270,000 contribution to his campaign? Is he allowed to contribute that much?
But in this case his expediency involved directly contradicting something he said only a few weeks prior, and also involved doing something that he had explicitly stated would make him unqualified to be president. I recognize that politicians do things out of political expediency, but they also need to realize that when they do it in such a blatant manner, even people who otherwise support their policies might start to get a bit annoyed about it.
No, it would not be a contribution to his campaign. The money went to the IRS, and goes into the federal government’s general revenue. Quite a different thing.
Between Romney and his wife they’ve donated $150,000 to the Romney 2012 campaign. In his 2008 campaign he contributed around 44 million.
You could consider it a $270,000 contribution to his campaign if he actually put it there. He seems content with blowing other peoples money this time around.
The government should just sit on that money for now because we all know win or lose Romney will come looking for it after the election.
Alright, here’s the thing. Romney has built his entire campaign on the theory that taxes, particularly for the “job creators”, are too high. But when he finally releases his taxes, we see a few interesting things:
First, Romney has enough surplus cash to make charitable donations that knock his effective tax rate down from the 15%+ capital gains rate. That's a 10% tithe to his church plus some other donations. These are totally voluntary contributions, which means that Romney, as a exemplar of the class which he claims is being overtaxed, is hardly being squeezed dry by the government.
Second, Romney has, apparently, enough of a surplus to not even claim some of his deductions. Again, hard to make the case that he (and by extension, those of his income group) is being taxed to oblivion.
Finally, Romney’s investments, which theoretically drive job creation, are doing just spiffy. His net worth is estimated at $250,000,000 and his taxable income this year, excluding his rather large tax-sheltered IRA $50M?), was 13.7M. That’s about a 6-7% return which is darned good considering current interest and bond rates. Despite Romney’s complaints about Obama’s disastrous economy, I’d say it’s doing pretty well by him.
So…so much for a terrible economy and a crushing tax burden. What else have you got?
Mitt has a little bit more to defend than either you or “I”.
To understand how much of a tax burden Mitt is, you’d have to go back and see how many people are still living off of government paid pensions because he stripped out their pension funds and foisted it onto us taxpayers. You’d also have to go back and see how much in federal grants and how many local tax abatement programs he took advantage of in generating his millions. Then there is the basics of ‘if we turned all the burglary prisoners loose’ they’d be most attracted to empty houses in high income neighborhoods. Oh, yes and private jets are possible because we maintain a federal aviation system that keeps the skies safe for them, perhaps we should consider how much building all those private air strips would cost the Mittster if he wanted to avoid being killed in a first-come-first-served style of air port?
What I’m wondering about is how in January, his preliminary 2011 return reported an Adjusted Gross Income of $20,901,075, and now that the return has been completed, his AGI is down to $13,696,961 (link). Has anyone figured out what’s up with that?
He set up a Roth IRA?
These are all things that a "summary would not show. I personally think he ook advantage of the 2009 amnesty and he undervalued assets he contributed to his IRA and his kid’s trust fund.
All the other stuff is perfectly legal and would not harm him for more than half a news cycle. Its not like we would be surprised if we found oput he engaged in tax planning or used tax shelters.
Err, but as a rule, they do.
Here was one of the top articles on google. Loopholes may take the form of moving assets overseas (benefiting from the infrastructure of the US to utilise the assets, but not paying taxes on them) or taking advantage of subsidies intended to stimulate small businesses or individuals.
That last part is the rational reason why he should have released them months ago - no one would care and by now we’d have all forgotten about it. Instead he’s turned it into a great big hairy deal and it’s burning up news cycles for him - news cycles even his allies agree that he can’t afford to waste this close to the election. What is he gaining here by turning this into the Issue That Will Not Die?
I agree. This is the smoking gun. My IRA is doing pretty good, but if it had increased 20x I’d be in heaven. But 227? Even Madoff’s clients didn’t make that much before the bottom fell out. Has anyone on the Romney side even addressed this?
I wonder if Obama isn’t keeping this for an October surprise.
As for 2011, we all knew that it would look more or less okay since it would be structured for the election. I never expected the hacking to make it look as high as it was would be so obvious. But the returns from before he knew they would be released are the true indicator of what his tax strategy was.