Contributors

Saturday, September 22, 2012

Romney Releases Tax Returns

Yesterday night Mitt R Money released his 2011 tax return. You can always tell when someone is embarrassed by some bit of news when they issue it late on a Friday night, in the vain hope that everyone will have forgotten about it by Monday morning.

Why is it embarrassing?
Mr. Romney’s return for 2011 showed that he paid an effective federal income tax rate of 14 percent last year, or a little more than $1.9 million on adjusted gross income of about $13.7 million.
So far so good. He's been telling us over and over that he paid at least 13%. But here's the kicker (emphasis added):
Mr. Romney’s tax return for last year showed just how sensitive a political matter his wealth and tax rate has become. In a bit of reverse financial engineering, he and his wife, Ann, gave up $1.75 million worth of charitable deductions, raising his tax payments significantly. 
Had he claimed all the deductions to which he was entitled in 2011, his effective rate could have dipped to near 10 percent, contradicting his past assurances that he had never paid below 13 percent. 
But forgoing the full deductions available to him put him at odds with his own past assertions that he had never paid more taxes than he owed and his statement that if he had done so, “I don’t think I’d be qualified to become president,” as he put it to ABC News in July.
Is Mitt is throwing in the towel? Or does he now consider the IRS a charitable deduction?

This just goes to show that the wealthy can pay any tax rate they want. Using gimmicks like investment losses from prior years, shifting income from salary to dividends and long-term capital gains, tax-free municipal bonds, and foreign tax havens, the rich can pay as little or as much tax as they want.

This highlights the most unfair aspect of the Bush tax cuts, and the thing that makes Romney's taxes so low: the capital gains tax rate. Under Bush that rate was reduced to 15%. To see how completely and outrageously unfair this is, go to the Money Chimp tax calculator.

Let's say you're an unmarried self-employed small businessman, a free-lance window cleaner for example, who makes $50,000. You pay $11,364 in income and FICA taxes (it's a little complicated because you have to calculate FICA tax separately and then plug the deductible half into the adjustments on the income tax form). That's 22.7%.

Now let's say you're an unmarried trust fund baby who sits on the beach all day drinking piƱa coladas, making that same $50,000 income as long-term capital gains from stock sales and dividends, and a portfolio of municipal bonds your dear old dad left you, which was only $3 million and you live in a Hawaii, so you paid no estate and inheritance taxes. You pay no FICA taxes on any of that. Your total tax bill is $1,305, or 2.61%. And if you marry the girlfriend who's living with you anyway, you pay nothing!

Go ahead and put in the number for your own salary and see how little you would pay if you made your money like rich people.

And then ask yourself why Mitt R Money thinks that the capital gains tax rate needs to be lowered even further.

7 comments:

Chairman Meow said...

Nikto, you stupid slut. If you're either too incompetent or too much of an inveterate political liar to even get the most basic detail of your first two sentences correct, why should anyone pay attention to the rest of your spittle-flecked rantings?

"He who cannot tell the big hand from the little hand on the clock knows jack-all about anything else." -- Sayings from Chairman Meow's Fluffy White Book

Anonymous said...

"he paid ... a little more than $1.9 million"

That fatcat isn't paying his fair share!

That doesn't even pay for 20 seconds of government expenses!

Fucking fatcats!

Anyone going to mention Harry Reid, and his 'guy who knows a guy' accusations?

I heard from a guy who knows a guy's cousin, that Obama got a full ride scholarship to Columbia for sheep fucking. It's an Indonesian Olympic sport, or something.

Anonymous said...

"This just goes to show that the wealthy can pay any tax rate they want."

Not (easily) yet, exactly. Let's see if it gets past the Senate.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-20/-buffett-rule-boomerangs-as-republican-tax-legislation.html

Then we can see exactly how many Liberals donate (easily) to the IRS. It has always been possible, but now it is so easy a Democrat can do it.

Anonymous said...

I note from Obama's 2011 tax return that he itemized his deductions instead of taking the standard deduction.

In essence, he STOLE more than $260,000 from the government, using a standard trick of the wealthy fatcats.

How come no little guys, or hard-working factory workers in Sheboygan get to DEDUCT $260,000 from their taxes!

Fucking fatcats!

http://www.taxhistory.org/thp/presreturns.nsf/Returns/1D6FCBBDBE24A89C852579DF0051B896/$file/B_Obama_2011.pdf

Larry said...

Mis-afternoon Friday EST is not "late Friday night". Unless Nikto's in St. Petersburg, Russia, dreaming about how awesome it must've been to have been a Chekhist there 90 years agoputting Fat Cats like Romney up against the wall.

Larry said...

fucking miserable phone screen keypad

Anonymous said...

Don't worry Larry. It isn't really worth commenting on anyway.