ROMNEY: OVERPAYING TAXES DISQUALIFIES PRESIDENT

[xchrom]

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/ML_ROMNEY_TAXES?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-07-29-13-19-18


JERUSALEM (AP) -- Mitt Romney says that if he paid more taxes than were required, he wouldn't be qualified to be president.

The U.S. presidential candidate tells ABC News that American voters expect candidates to pay "only what the tax code requires." He says he hasn't calculated what percentage of his income was paid in taxes but says that he's been audited.

Romney's vast personal wealth has been an issue in the campaign.

Democrats have criticized him for paying only 13.9 percent of his income in taxes during the one year his taxes have been made public.

[rocktivity]

1. But we DON'T KNOW how much you paid in taxes, Mitt!

rocktivity

[notadmblnd]

2. That's absurd

if you overpay your taxes, you get a refund. It doesn't disqualify anyone from being anything.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

3. It's all about you, Mitt.

Never mind the larger question of tax and income inequity across the public spectrum. It's not about how all the people you want votes from are hurting or how their children don't stand a chance at half the lives their parents and grandparents had. It's all about you.

[Heather MC]

4. Ha!!

Um No RMoney, hiding your money and sheltering it in other countries to not have to pay taxes is not something a person running for president of this country should be doing. If you are not willing to invest your money in America, then you should NOT be president

And because you are Christian you should know
the bible says, "where your treasure is, there your heart will be also"
Welp your teasure, Rmoney, is laid up in the Caymen Islands and Switzerland perhaps you should go to those countries and attempt to get elected president.

[KT2000]

5. my Irish grandmother

always said she was proud to pay taxes to the United States. She did not try game the system either.
Willard is such an ass.

[ananda]

6. Care to put your money where your AS is?

nt

[Live and Learn]

7. So prove to us you didn't overpay, Mitt.

Show us those tax returns or we will have to assume you overpaid and are disqualified from being President.

[JoePhilly]

10. +1

[salin]

8. IOW, all of us peons who don't shelter money in the Carribean

and in Switzerland are not qualified to be presidents - because we don't attempt to avoid paying taxes.

What an idiot.

[Bluerthanblue]

9. oh, yeah, because sacrificing for your country would be

so unpresidential eh Mitt?

You aren't qualified to have power over anyone imo. Not your dog, your family and clearly not the American people.

[gollygee]

11. Newest Republican meme

I've heard this too from people. The gist is that if it's legal, it can't be unethical. That if he paid a penny more than the absolute least he could possibly pay using every single loophole available, he's a fool. And the next part is that he isn't releasing his tax returns because the rest of us are too stupid to understand that and might consider things to be unethical even though we shouldn't see them that way.

To which I replied that lots of things that are legal are unethical, and that it's contradictory with the complaint that we are a nanny state and we shouldn't legislate morality.

[ProSense]

12. So that's

what he's hiding.

What’s in Romney’s Unreleased Tax Returns: He Overpaid His Taxes by Erick Erickson
http://www.redstate.com/erick/2012/07/19/whats-in-romneys-unreleased-tax-returns-he-overpaid-his-taxes/

[struggle4progress]

13. Yup! That's always the first thing I check about a candidate:

I like to look over twenty years or so of tax records, just to make sure there are no overpaid taxes

[JHB]

14. A very convenient view for a man whose fortune revolves around a tax loophole

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021041140

And not just a little cheaper. As the Treasury Department recently explained, "The effective corporate marginal tax rate on new equity-financed investment in equipment is 37 percent in the United States. At the same time, the effective marginal tax rate on the same investment made with debt financing is minus 60 percent--a gap of 97 percentage points." The result:

This creates a bias by corporations toward debt.

Or, for the likes of Mitt Romney, a business model.

For the leveraged buyout (LBO) kings of the 1970's and 1980's, that was the pot of the gold at the end of the rainbow. Because the same interest deduction applied whether debt was taken on for a new factory or just to pay investors, Josh Kosman detailed in The Buyout of America, the early corporate raiders and their private equity successors could almost mint money as they bought firms for a fraction of the overall deal size:

Kohlberg saw a way to make debt far less onerous for the company being acquired. He would have the company treat its debt the way businesses handle capital expenditures--as operating expenses deduced from profits through the depreciation tax schedules, thereby greatly reducing taxes. With far less to pay the government, his companies could use the money that formerly went to Uncle Sam to retire these huge loans at an unusually fast rate. Bear's equity would rise with every dollar the companies paid back in debt, even if the value of the businesses only remained the same. The final step in the plan was to sell these companies, usually within four to six years.

[jillan]

15. I have had it with his holier than thou attitude.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

16. I wonder how many times he's been audited, when, and what triggered the IRS alarm bells

and the outcome, such as whether he had to pay more, plus penalties and interest. If he's got tax professionals doing his taxes and was still audited and had to pay more, it kind of eats into his argument that he's meeting every legal requirement on his own.

By volunteering that he's been audited, has Romney opened a door to further questions and concerns? How many times? When? Why? What result? Was he fined?

[warrior1]

17. That's about the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

[Kablooie]

18. Yes! It should be a felony to not use every loophole in the tax code.

If you overlook a deduction you go to jail!

[kentuck]

19. I'll tell you what disqualifies you from the Presidency...

When you are not loyal enough to your own country to put your profits here and you put it in foreign banks to escape paying taxes, that is a disqualifier. That is unAmerican and unworthy of anyone running for President of this country.

[ohheckyeah]

20. At this point

the best thing Mittsy could do is say he has a health problem, drop out, go home and enjoy his wealth and save himself from further embarrassment. He's such a bumbling idiot I wouldn't vote for him as dog catcher.