"Mitt Romney is paying… too much in taxes?" by Brad Plummer at WP

[applegrove]

Mitt Romney is paying… too much in taxes?

by Brad Plummer at WP

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/09/21/mitt-romney-is-paying-too-much-in-taxes/

"SNIP........................................

Let’s review: In 2011, Romney earned $14 million, mostly from investments that are taxed at a lower, preferential rate. He also gave a very large amount of money to charity—more than $4 million. So, thanks to the charitable deduction in the tax code, he was technically allowed to reduce the amount of income subject to the income tax even further.

The trouble is, if Romney did that, he would have ended up paying less than 13 percent of his income in federal taxes (back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest the amount would have likely been somewhere around 9 to 11 percent). That would have conflicted with his statement in August that he has paid at least 13 percent the past ten years. So Romney opted to limit his charitable deduction to just $2.25 million, essentially agreeing to pay the government more in taxes than he needed to. In the end, Romney had an effective federal tax rate of 14.1 percent.

There’s nothing wrong with voluntarily donating a bit more to reduce the federal deficit. Although there is this awkward quote from Romney during a primary debate in January: “I pay all the taxes that are legally required and not a dollar more,” he said. “I don’t think you want someone as the candidate for president who pays more taxes than he owes.”

Meanwhile, at first glance, it appears that Harry Reid’s infamous source alleging that Romney paid nothing in taxes for 10 years was incorrect—at least for the years 1990 to 2009. According to the notarized summary from PriceWaterhouseCoopers, “Over the entire 20-year period, the lowest annual effective federal personal tax rate [paid by the Romneys] was 13.66%.”

.......................................SNIP"

[aquart]

1. Does the notarized document say anything about the tax amnesty or amended returns?

So we still don't know if Reid was right.

[dkf]

3. He still paid taxes every year. Reid was an idiot to say all that stuff.

He gave Romney such a low bar.

[unblock]

4. rmoney CLAIMS to have paid taxes every year.

given that he won't release actual tax returns from years he can no longer amend, why should we believe anything he says about them?

sometimes in politics you make nasty allegations just to make the other guy deny them.

reid's statement helped keep the story in play and help force rmoney to deny it and eventually come out with these numbers, which remain quite damaging to rmoney.

yay, they're not zero, yippee. they're still ridiculously and inappropriately low and help convince voters that rmoney lives on a different planet.

moreover, we're only getting percentages for most of the 20 years. that leaves open the possibility that used deductions and overseas money hiding to get his taxable income way, way down. so for all we know he paid 13.66% on just $50,000 of taxable income, meanwhile hiding tens of millions of income overseas, in trusts, in shelters, etc.


had reid's statement been a real mistake, rmoney wouldn't have dumped this on a friday afternoon.

[LiberalFighter]

2. Can we trust the person assigned from PriceWaterhouseCoopers

to provide the correct details?

[unblock]

5. gee, it's notarized!

which of course confirms the identity of the pwc person and nothing else.