Greg Sargent/Plum Line
The red bar is the the tax rate Mitt Romney will pay in 2013 if Congress makes no changes to tax law. The black one is what Mr. Romney pays now. Working off data from Citizens for Tax Justice, Greg Sargent writes:
This is about more than Romney's tax burden; it goes to the very heart of what this election is all about. The GOP is set to nominate someone who not only disagrees with Obama about what constitutes fair taxation. Romney personally embodies, and personally benefits from, everything that Obama and Dems will allege is unfair about our current tax system and all the ways the economy is rigged for the rich, and against the middle class.
Ezra Klein posts another chart, one that compares the tax rates paid by presidential candidates going back to Michael Dukakis. Barack Obama's was the highest.
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Mitt Romney is not a normal American. He is an out of touch multi-millionaire that has never had to experience the true struggles of daily American life in his entire privileged existence. Mitt may try to cover his platinum soul, but his sweetheart tax rate and speaking of making "only" $350,000 a year in speaking fees in such a nonchalant manner is great insight into his character and background. Mitt Romney has probably led to more layoffs of working Americans than any man in this country. His entire fiscal policy platform is designed to give himself as many tax cuts and government giveaways as possible. http://www.sunstateactivist.org
It's not just Romney - all of the GOP candidates have the same "tax policy" in mind! This is part of the reason why the Congress with it's 241 millionaires refuses to even entertain "raising taxes on those job creators"!!
Mitt is just following the laws that congress made. Just like Pelosi does. If you don't like it or it is not fair, then tell your representative or senator to change the laws.
Just like we should change insider trading by our congress and make it ILLEGAL for them to do so.
@contessa61,
You need to listen more closely to Romney's remarks in Nevada last year. He wanted foreclosures to get worse with more evictions so more wealthy people can purchase more investment property at a lower price created by making more people homeless and unemployed.
Mitt seems to obey the law most of the time but he lacks a soul. This quality earned him the nickname "Tin Man". The entire GOP lineup seems to have the same thing going on.
I have not heard an explanation that would convince me that voting for people like that would be a good idea.
Public opinion appears to be heading in the same direction.
Am I the only one that sees the obvious here? According to MSNBC, Mr. Romney made 42 million last year. God bless him and may we all see income like that one day. Out of that 42 million he paid 16 million in taxes. If this is correct then isn't reality that he paid well over 35% of his annual income to the federal government no matter the stated rate?
Now Mr. Buffet's secretary, God bless her and I'm sure is well compensated for her efforts and loyalty, is afforded many deductions like the rest of us including mortgage interest, child deductions, business expenses, and tax loop holes like campaign contributions that are not subject to federal taxes. After subtracting her social security contributions, what percentage of her gross income is actually paid to federal taxes? Even though the stated rates are like 35% or over, reality maybe 5-15%.
My point is the tax code is so retardedly complicated the stated tax rate is actually reverse of the realized percentage of taxes paid compared to gross income.
I think an even bigger issue of this revelation is one single taxpayer in this country is paying 14-16 million in taxes a year and the Federal government can't balance the budget.....really?
Now, I love your research, and I never fear having to share your posts, BUT, Isn't this graph a bit "Fox News-y" putting Mitt's possible tax rate all the way at the top? It makes his REAL tax rate look that much smaller by comparison. Why not add two more graphs? Add "Mitt's Taxes under the Clinton-Era rates" and "What the average non-millionaire American Citizen pays." I think that would provide a more, pardon the expression, fair and balanced view. If you really want to be bitingly partisan while remaining truthful, which is certainly allowed, why not add "Mitt's Taxes before his advisors told him to ditch his off shore and Swiss Bank accounts?"
Change that to "Reagan-era" -- never hurts to appeal to Saint Ronnie.
Or to put things into real perspective, "Eisenhower-era." Three-dimensional graphs are easy enough, so you could put another axis to show tax rates vs. income ranges vs. time (Eisenhower to present) and what Mitt would be paying in each era and in several possible 2013s.
The Republicans are not going to discuss tax fairness. Rather, they will resort to claiming "class warfare" and propose a flat tax. This will be in addition to renewing the Bush tax cuts. It will incumbent on Obama to force the Republicans to detail what programs they intend to cut to pay for the Bush tax cuts. He should not let them off the hook with ambiguities. Obama also needs to point out the hypocrisy of the fights over the deficits if the Republicans use the Bush tax cuts as an issue. The president needs to have a plan, even for tonights address, that he can campaign on that will cut deficits and protect domestic programs. This will include some tax cuts, some spending cuts and changes to simplify the tax code while eliminating some subsidies to companies that are not creating jobs here. That will be the easiest way to attract voters, including some conservatives.
It's not just the President that needs to "force the GOP" to talk specifics, what about the voting public that appears to lap up like pablum the same lame "talking points" spewed forth by every member of the GOP!
If the Republicans stay ambiguous on their plans, then Obama can tell the people to look at the Ryan budget for the Republican ideas of what to cut. That puts the Republicans on the spot. Obama should keep them boxed in and nowhere to run.
"Point out the hypocrisy"? That is the problem. To any fact a liar can reply with another lie.
Liars always win. If you ignore the liar, the liar wins by default. It you respond with facts, you become a target for abuse and the liar can spew even more exaggerated lies. And third, if you chastize the liar for lying, the liar with play the victim and take a morally superior position.
Missing: Mitt's taxes under his proposed tax law.
Sargent's article discusses that- Mitt's tax policy would essentially keep his taxes right around what he paid in 2010. You know, "fair".
Mitt Romney= MR. 1%
Why did we let them raise taxes and debt even as an issue? They don't want to pay taxes, leave the country, we all have to pay our fair share, now more than ever, and not wanting to pay taxes is absolute treason, they use ALL the services and are basically five year olds. Never one syllable as Bush skyrocketed the debt, and we allowed them to use it as an issue, it is not. The issue is growth and survival from Bush era policies of greed.
"Why did we let them raise taxes and debt even as an issue?"
Dems are bad at messaging. They are reluctant to use the "patriotism" card as an argument.
The way they try to argue it is even though the government is the entity that prints our money and gives our money worth, that money is somehow theirs and not the governments. Therefore the government is 'stealing" their money which they see as an afront to their basic constitutional rights of liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The government, they would argue, is directly inhibiting their ability to pursue liberty and happiness. The weirdest thing, of course, is that they will spend the rest of the day talking about how good poor people have it and how almost half of the nation doesn't pay income tax so we should raise their income taxes before the wealthy since the poor really can afford it (them being poor is just a smokescreen to skirt the law!....or something). Because when we take the poor's money away=liberty and freedom. When we take the wealthy's money away=tyranny.
Obama and the Dems are intelligent enough to rebut taxes/liberty argument. Read the Declaration of Independence and the litany of abuses by King George. Taxes are mentioned once and all of the abuses were about representation. The Founders were concerned about individual rights which is how the Bill of Rights came into existence. There is nothing about freedom from taxes in those amendments.
I didn't say it was a sane argument ;-). That's just how it's been argued to me before by the right. In reality it's the most insane argument out there, especially when you consider that your government is the entity that gives your money value. But these people also believe in supply side economics and believe that the stock exchange should set the value of the interest rate and the dollar. From that prospective it's easy to see why they'd see it as thievery because in their mind money should be divorced from the government in so far as it's value and existence. This, of course, leads to the other problem I've been raising w/ the logic because if we hand our value over to WallStreet then the dollar will pretty much fluctuate to the point that we either A. are force to go international w/ our currency (which you'd think the "ahh! the UN black helicopters are coming to get me!" crowd wouldn't approve of) or B. we'd have to completely change our monetary system to something that could actually be viable for use (the dollar would fluctuate too much to be practical).
@Mouzer
Sometimes I wonder if we need to draw a straight line from point "A" to point "B" for the Dems.
@Mike Paganucci,
How many people would Romney have to fire if his annual income goes from 19 million to 15 million because of increased tax?
Answer: zero.
How many people are employed by the gold sitting in a bank vault?
Investments do not buy consumer products. Almost all income of wealthy people in the top 1% goes to investment and not purchasing power. That income has nothing to do with employment.
1 trillion of static investment funds were extracted from the economy and converted to gold or sent out of the US. Romney did both. This crashed the housing market and wall street. That created unemployment.
Consumer demand creates jobs, and that is because increased cash flow through an economy creates income. This is the ONLY way to create jobs.
Increased cash flow is created by three things.
Every presidential administration that has increased all 3 of these at the same time has created lower unemployment and greater wealth.
Increased cash flow comes from increased lending. A very simple economic idea. Please go to www.khanacademy.com and watch some videos on how banking works. As far as I can tell, you have no idea.
I have stated this time and time again. The Republicans are conservative for the rich. When George Bush said no new taxes he meant for the rich. He didn't make that promise to the middle class but they bought it and put him in the White House. I laugh at the conservative values republicans claim to have. You can't teach morality it has to be taught in the home. You can't force that onto people. Getting rid of birth control and abortion will only add to the problems we already have not eliminate them. The republicans preach about morals but forget that sex sells and in turn would hurt the corporations that fund them.
I'm a lefty, but this whole discussion makes me uncomfortable, because I do think that we can be perceived as asking successful people to apologize for their success, or at least to pay a penalty for it. Romney paid 6.2 million in income taxes...that's a lot of money. Perhaps I need to be reminded again why people in higher income brackets should be asked to pay a higher percentage of taxes than those in lower brackets. Why is that fair? And, don't say because they can afford to pay more. That's nonsense, and that's not a fair basis for taxing people. Paying the same percentage is fair, but I'm not convinced that paying a higher percentage is.
US currency only has value so long as the US is able to meet it's debt obligations. When the US is unable to meet it's debt obligations the value of the dollar decreases which impacts everyone. Wealthy people have more US currency which means they stand to lose more if the US dollar goes down. What directly affects the ability of the US government to meet it's debt obligations? The ability of the US to pay that debt. And how does the US make money? Through taxation. Therefore it is in the wealthiest percentages best interest to pay more in taxes for the overall purchasing power of each dollar they have. Also since most wealthy people gain income by providing a service and/or product to the public the increased value of the dollar means that the lower classes have more purchasing power as well (which means they buy more product which means the upper percent makes more money in the long run). The people who have the least interest in paying the debt actually are the lowest class. Remember that debt and deficits are NOT paid by the lowest class of Americans. Only the upper middle class and above pay the debt and deficit, therefore the burden is on them. Taxing them more makes it possible for their dollar to have more value and for them to have more purchasing power. It's actually insane for a wealthy person to ask that their tax rate be lowered and this part of why you have so many millionaires (like Rachel herself) coming out in favor of higher taxation. Beyond all of this the United States needs to set a tax policy that can sustain us for some time and then we need to keep it at that rate. A flat tax rate will not work for the US. Progressive income tax or a national sales tax are the only two economically viable options that can be used. We cannot use a national sales tax unless we are willing to permanently increase the poverty rate in America to about 30% or higher (depending on which economic study you refer to). We also cannot go to a national sales tax unless you want some 60-70% of the nation receiving welfare from the government (again depending on which study you reference). Thus the only economically viable option is the progressive income tax system, which carries that the highest among us (those who have the most to lose from lack of taxation) pay the highest rate.
@Mark,
Don't think of it as "penalizing the wealthy". Wealthy people didn't get that way in a vacuum, nor is "paying a higher rate in taxes" tantamount to making them apologize for it! Taxes are what everyone pays to live in a nation (any nation) that allows that nation to function, that allows the states to provide "goods & services" to their people, e.g. - roads, schools, trash, military, EPA (that ensures we have clean, potable water) etc. - you get the idea.
And while many don't want to pay - the truth is that when those at the top are scamming out of paying their share, then that "trickle down" effect is that those with less end up paying more, and those "goods & services" start getting chopped.....Just think of why education is always on the chopping block, the Unions are under attack, the agencies that protect Americans from the gross negligence of corporate abuse are under attack, now are you starting to get it?
@Mark Lowder-830997,
Wealthy people create wealthy by exploiting poverty.
If you don't believe me, then you need to listen more closely to Romney's remarks in Nevada last year. He wanted foreclosures to increase with more evictions so that wealthy people (like him) can buy more investment property created by making people homelessness.
Wealthy farming families in France took advantage of this phenomenon by withholding grain to increase price, which caused a famine that killed quite a few people. The poor people executed all of the wealthy people during the French Revolution so they could get food to eat. Marie Antoinette was so unable to comprehend what it was like to be starving and poor that she said poor people should eat cake if they cannot afford to buy bread.
Luckily, the US has democracy so that the majority can vote to control this kind of thing instead of killing people to protect the poor.
Of course, that doesn't work if people make stupid choices when they vote.
There was an answer to the ageless question of taxes once made a couple of thousand years ago: "Give unto Ceasar that which is Ceasar's and give Unto God that which is God's."
So really, instead of giving all the people who want to know why a wealthy person should pay a little bit more in taxes, put aside all the rational, logical arguements and just tell 'em, "Because Jesus said so!"
Course, I'm sure there is some way to wiggle out of that one...
The Mouzer- "it is in the wealthiest percentages best interest to pay more in taxes"
Yep. Tax cuts are tax hikes. Who is going to pay back the trillions in debt? It will take decades of 90% top tax bracket to pay back the money the rich have already stolen with tax cuts. Will that happen? No, it won't. What will happen? Go figure.
Tax hikes are tax cuts. Higher taxes mean more spending which grows the economy and creates investment return higher that the tax increase.
1. It is an unbelievable eye-opener for some of us to know the deeper truths about the personalities of Mitt Romney & Newt Gingrich behind their programmed robotic body language and their "fumbled" choicest phrases. Makes you ask yourself: Where have they learned the technique to self destruct in such glowing innocence?
As more informed individuals in the media share their thoughts, observations & well-researched evidence, I am having fun watching both of them get slowly disrobed! Wonder who is better sculpted?
2. And the Boycott-thon WINNER is....!!! THE FLAG BEARER for students contemplating dropping out!
3. Where do growing kids easily learn to disrespect others perfectly well? From TV specially during competition in politics. From whom? ????
Hmm, can the word"adult" please be clearly explained? No, no. I'm not asking the politicians. I'm asking it form them.
Campaign reform is an important issue, but the thing is the people are having a hard time believing that something good will actually occur for all people. Will all this in America finally be for everyone in America or will the rich just look to passive the people than go back to their usual bs of corruption. The American people do want to believe in something better. But what have they gotten to show for all the things they have stood for, when these rich corrupt ones just keep manipulating the government for their own benefit and no one else’s. The average American works, gets a pay check and in the end gets very little to show for it, except heartache at the end and more demands from the rich that people have to compromise to. The American people have done nothing, but endlessly compromising for hopes of something better and in the end got nothing.
Mitt Romney paid 0.14% in Self employment tax which pay for social programs in this country.
Capital gains is taxed at a flat 15%. What about the payroll tax? I guess financiers do not pay that at all. Everyone else pays 15.3% payroll tax (temporarily reduced as stimulus). I do not know what other federal income tax a financier pays whose income is capital gains.
erica.org/showyoursupport
We are the victims of theft
the best thing we can do is to get CORRPERATIONS out of the lobby. Corrperations are not people. thier stock holders speak for them. they should not be allowed to have anything to do with the political process. The media should stop being bias and only be able to report scientific facts that show the whole truth not part of it. I can say crime has gone up or down using the same facts. IE the number of crimes has gone up / the number of crime per capita have gone down. both statements can be true with the same facts. too bad most folks are too stupid to understand that.
I think Willard would see envy in such a chart! -Kevo
Perhaps Willard would see envy all over a chart like that! May be the only explanation his pecuniary brain could conclude! -Kevo
Mitt Robme claims he can create jobs.The question is where.The Cayman Islands,Burmuda or Switzerland maybe?Newtie Gingrich can also create jobs,putting children to work as janitors.Lets see,if it takes 10 kids to take the place of one janitor,thats a +9 Job creation,not bad Newt.
@ logical dog, did you pay income tax last year?
@ logical dog, did you pay income tax last year?
Mittens has to save money for the hair dye and magic underpants.
If most of Romney's charitable contribution is to the non profit religious org, LDS, which is documented as not really being generous in its own charitable contributions, but rather operates as a lobbyist against initiatives like prop 8 and abortion, then where is the admirable charitable contribution - really?
Is there a chart showing the percentage of Romney's money dedicated to job creation, over the past two years? Perhaps Romney believes that the unemployed are just like he is. Who needs a job when you can casually rake in millions through investments and untaxed offshore banking?
You know charts and graphs can be made to mislead. The big thing in all of this is trust. With all that has happened who do you trust?
The figure was tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of the grave. The mask which concealed the visage was made so nearly to resemble the countenance of a stiffened corpse that the closest scrutiny must have had difficulty in detecting the cheat. And yet all this might have been endured, if not approved, by the mad revellers around. But the mummer had gone so far as to assume the type of the Red Death. His vesture was dabbled in blood -- and his broad brow, with all the features of the face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror.
And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all
Masque of the Red Death by Poe (it fits this topic,at least in my twisted mind but then I always saw the GOP in this light)
Help! I just don't understand what I'm hearing about MR's taxes. More specifically, I don't understand what I'm NOT hearing. Given the range of his reported worth, is the reported wealth significantly underestimated, or what don't I understand? It seems to me the amount of income reported reflects an unusually high percentage of profit, certainly way higher than a person invested in the top earning investment money market, etc, funds might hope for. Otherwise he's more a half billionaire than a quarter billionaire???? If I invested in THE best money management firm/program, what does Romney's team know that other professionals don't? Why couldn't I get such a return on my investments, if I had money to invest? Less important: I thought LDS tithed; isn't Romney's LDS contribution way short of 10%? Perhaps I'm ignorant of the ways of the financial world in which he thrives, but I haven't seen or heard any commentary that addresses to what extent his rate of return on investment is normal in a recession, nor how his LDS contribution reflects compliance with LDS contributions. Is he a typical rick guy? Is he a good Mormon?
Did anyone else notice the advertisements between the segments of The Rachel Maddow Show as viewed online on MSNBC.com on Jan 23rd? Americans For Prosperity was the sponser. Isn't that one of the Koch Bros or Dick Armey organizations? It was about Solyandra and Obama. Definetly an anit-Obama ad between the segments. Interesting, the enemy is sneaking into the camp.
Know thy enemy . Why are you concerned? After all Rachel's show does not attract mindless beings willing to accept lies like foxian fools do.Truth is that, even right wingers are waking up to that ring in their nose,
I have been puzzled as to why MSNBC allows these kinds of commercials as well. I even saw an ad from the crazy man Beck. I can't figure out if they have to take the ads because they need the $s or if they have to by law.
A couple of elections ago when I was placing ads for a state representative candidate on local conservative radio (which is pretty much our only option here) we were told they weren't sure they had enough inventory when they didn't want to run our Democratic ads. Considering our local scene here and the timing of my requests I seriously doubt that was the case.
So I have to pay alternative minimum tax on my earned income, why don't Ronmey and the other one per centers have to pay alternative minimum tax on their unearned income.
I should point out that the AMT did apply to Romney. His tax return was twice challenged by the IRS and he twice had to pay a couple hundred thousand more in taxes to the IRS. That challenge came from the AMT. Even w/ that said we're talking about around 280,000$ that he was charged. Not exactly a lot and as a percentage of his income versus what you and I have to pay....way less.