poor mittens );

[emmaraikou]

Mitt Romney's Tax Returns Show 13.9% Tax Rate, Highlight Challenges For Wealthy Candidates

WASHINGTON -- In an attempt to stop a steady stream of bad press over questions about his income, assets and tax rate, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney released one year of his tax returns and an estimate for his 2011 tax returns on Tuesday

Comments

[grace_om]

It it will be interesting to see how he goes forward to justify a reduced tax rate for capital gains as an incentive for "job creators" to reinvest those gains and so create jobs, when clearly he's been enjoying this profit as personal income. To to my mind it's a perfect illustration of why the Republicans' so-called jobs plan is really just a big lie and an excuse to take money from the middle class and throw it at the super-rich.

[baked_goldfish]

He could hit Gingrich by stating that under Gingrich's code, he would have paid zero in taxes. He halfway went there in last night's debate. If he wanted to craft a relatively moderate (for the GOP) message, he could point out that he's happy to pay taxes on his income, whereas Gingrich etc. are happy to let him not contribute anything at all to society.

[grace_om]

I guess I was more thinking ahead to how it would play in the country at large, but LOL! I don't know if crafting a "moderate" message could possibly help him get the GOP nomination, where they seem to be falling all over themselves to be as outrageous as possible. I must be from another planet or something, because I just can't wrap my head around what makes these people tick.

[baked_goldfish]

where they seem to be falling all over themselves to be as outrageous as possible.

No joke, this primary is a crapload of WTF. I don't understand how Gingrich is managing to hit him with his making too much money for the GOP, but it seems like the response to that is, "You think I make too much money, but at the same time you don't want me to pay taxes because you think I'm helping the economy?" iow pointing out the lack of internal consistency on Gingrich's part.

But that might be why I'm not a Republican. I expect some level of internal consistency.

I guess I was more thinking ahead to how it would play in the country at largeThis is sort of why I'm kind of meh about these being released right now. By the time we get to the general, this stuff is old news. We're just too far away from October for the media to still be covering this then; by then, ten million things will have happened and the Romney campaign will have solid responses to this stuff (they probably already were working on them, not expecting to be challenged by their

[baked_goldfish]

I'm not astounded at the fact that he makes a lot of money and pays very little taxes, I'm astounded that that is an issue in a Republican primary. And also I'm kind of a little bit, I don't know, annoyed, that it's out there this early because by the time the general election rolls around it'll be old news for the media, maybe people will have time to adjust to it, the Romney campaign will have had time to formulate boilerplate responses to questions about it etc. I just don't trust the media to stay with this for longer than a week or two, even though it points to one of the basic issues in American politics right now, which is tax code fairness and the value and societal cost of lower taxes.

[alryssa]

IA. The media has such a ridiculously short attention span. Romney just exemplifies everything that's fucked up about the notion of wealth in this country and how the idea that 'working to make your dream come true' is just a flat out lie, based on current tax code and policies; what he's missing is the fact that he didn't work to earn that money, he just basically fleeced it and gamed the system and is living off the interest, having worked nary a day in his life. And that's something to be valued? Maybe in Bizarro GOP and Wall Street land, but not for the majority of Americans who are struggling to just EAT right now.

[baked_goldfish]

I mean, I even understand the reasoning behind a lower long-term capital gains rate than the short-term rate, but it seems ridiculous to me that it's this low. Short-term gains are taxed as regular income, why not tax long-term gains after a certain threshold as regular income as well? Or have a progressive scale the way earned income is taxed.

[browneyedguuurl]

The returns show that Mitt and Ann Romney, who are worth from $190 million to $250 million, earned $21.7 million in 2010 and paid a 13.9 percent tax rate, lower than that of a person earning $50,000.

I.CAN'T!

[anolinde]

Mitt and Ann Romney, who are worth from $190 million to $250 million

Oh man, haha, I wish I were worth, like, a tenth of that.

[sonadoras456]

Um, regardless if he's "paying" taxes or not on those offshore accounts..why in the fuck does he have those accounts OFFSHORE? That's the question lol

[baked_goldfish]

Blind trusts technically keep the details of the investments away from the person whose money it is. They're mostly used by politicians and lobbyists to keep investing without appearing like they have a conflict of interest - basically you hand your money to a third party and tell them to make more money (legally) without telling you the details. So technically it's quite possible that he could have absolutely no clue.

That said, I wouldn't be surprised if the guy running the Romneys' blind trusts wasn't also buddy-buddy with him and slipped him information about the trusts anyway. Or if Romney was just able to guess what was going on, because he's not a complete idiot.