Wonder why Romney's accountant had to go back 20 YEARS to get a higher tax rate?

[Honeycombe8]

Romney's accounting firm has released an "average tax rate" that Romney has paid over the last 20 years. 20 years? That's odd. 20 years? Why would the firm go back 20 years? That's a lot of years. No one has even asked him to produce 20 years worth of returns. (He hasn't produced them; his acctg firm has produced a statement SUMMARIZING parts of them, sort of.)

Hmmmm.....were the tax rates higher for the upper income then? Were some of the loopholes for the wealthy less then? Do you have go farther back than a decade to find a higher capital gains tax rate, something that applies to Romney since MUCH of his income falls in that category?

A quick fact check, and ba-da-bing.

The capital gains tax dropped to its lowest rate of 15% in 2003. That means that going back 9 or 10 years wasn't going to give Romney a good tax rate avg that he paid. He WOULD have to go back further, when the CAPITAL GAINS TAX RATES were higher.

The TOP tax rate in the U.S.? You have to go back to 1994 to find a rate significantly higher than the current 33%. In 1994 the top rate was 39.6%. Hey, that's almost 20 years ago!

Imagine that. I now wonder when all that money started shifting to the Cayman Islands. His accountant released an "average" tax rate over 20 years. Could a couple of those years in the last decade show Romney paid NO taxes? So he'd need the higher taxes he paid in the decade before to make his average federal income tax rate higher.

They think we're idiots. Smoke and fog. Find the pea under the pod.

[Honeycombe8]

1. I guess not. nt

[Tennessee Gal]

2. You got it exactly right. There is no other reason to find an average over twenty

years that I can think of other than needing high tax rate years to make the average line up with what he has said publicly. No wonder he has not released anything of substance. Those accountants must have been working a lot of overtime to find a smarmy way around the many things he has said.

Personally, I have no doubt that there are years in that twenty when he paid no taxes at all.

[Gabi Hayes]

3. too bad Hillary Rosen (sic?) doesn't read here, cause she just sat there and took

it when a Townhall pundit said Mitt's tax returns over the last 20 years were just fine and dandy.

why don't the DEMS know and make hay over this?

I don't think even Rachel brought this up, but I've been switching back between her and Piers, so she may have

others haven't, yet, though

I imagine they will, cause it's so obvious

[LiberalAndProud]

4. They massaged those numbers until they got one that was -- palatable, sort of.

I agree with you Honeycombe8, they went back until they could find an average that wasn't embarrassing. And they still try to sell us the line that their tax rate is too high. If the electorate buys that, I've got a bridge ...

[kentuck]

5. Because ...

in order to get a good average, they had to go back a few years before they lowered the capital gains tax rate, in order to make the average more presentable. Of course, the average means nothing unless we know what the total income was per year. It is deceptive at the least.

[kestrel91316]

6. Because for the past 10 years he hasn't paid ANY income taxes.

[SunSeeker]

7. Romney is just trying to tell another desperate lie.

Oh, and he releases it on a Friday night news dump.