Obama ad: Did Romney pay zero percent in taxes?
A new ad from the Obama campaign suggests that Mitt Romney may have paid a zero percent income tax rate.
The spot opens on an interview with the presumptive Republican presidential nominee in which he is asked if he has ever paid a lower rate than the 13.9 percent income tax rate he paid in 2010. Romney responds that he would be "happy to go back and look."
"Did Romney pay 10 percent in taxes? Five percent? Zero?" a narrator asks in the spot. "We don't know."
Romney has released only his 2010 tax returns and an estimate of his 2011 returns. Democrats have called on him to release returns from previous years, with some suggesting (without evidence) that he is not doing so because he did not pay taxes in some of those years.
After raising the tax issue, the spot shifts focus.
"But we do know that Romney personally approved over $70 million in fictional losses to the IRS as part of the notorious 'Son of Boss' tax scandal," the narrator says. "One of the largest tax avoidance schemes in history. Isn't it time for Romney to come clean?"
A February Bloomberg article reported that Romney chaired Marriott International's audit board for five years in the 1990s, when the company reportedly set up the "Son of BOSS" tax shelter. It was one of the company's "complex tax-avoidance maneuvers" that angered the Internal Revenue Service, which invalidated the maneuver in 2009, calling it "fictitious" and a "scheme."
The ad is the latest in a week of harsh and unfair attacks from both sides. The Romney campaign released two spots attacking the president on welfare and an alleged "war on religion," while a super PAC backing the president suggested Romney was responsible for the death of the wife of a steelworker.
The Romney campaign called the new ad "another dishonorable and dishonest attack," though it did not directly dispute its substance in a statement released to the press.
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In plain words your article on the 14% that Romney paid on his 2010 taxes is innumerate bull
First of all he would not pay any Social Security or Medicare taxes on non-wage earnings and that is the vast bulk of his declared income.
Second, we KNOW how much he paid in Social Security and Medicare Taxes, it is right there on his return in line 27 where he lists half the Social Security and Medicare Taxes from Schedule C Self Employment 2 x $14,576 or 29,152
Third we KNOW what his income was, 21,661,344.
Fourth, we KNOW how much he paid in taxes 3,009,766
You can find all of these numbers at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
So now you pick up your cell phone and do some long division.
The Social Security and Medicare Taxes as a percentage of his income is 29,152/21,666,344x 100% = 0.134%, or a bit more than an additional tenth of a percent
The Income Tax he paid was 3,009,766/21,661,344 x 100% = 13.89% of his income
Then add it up and you find the percentage of the Federal Income Tax and Social Security and Medicare Tax he paid = 14.02%
So you are moaning about .02%?
You owe the Obama campaign a grovelling apology.
LOL!
Why do the Obama followers that are not voting for Romney care about his tax returns?
Probably not, since he's from the planet Kolob, and is trying to become a god in his mormon cult, so he can return to Kolob with his hidden MONEY in the Caymans, the Bahamas and in Switzerland!
Of course they do, since taxes are at a post-WWII LOW for both individual and corporations, which is why we have a severe federal revenue problem of a mere 14% of GDP -- one of the main drivers of our budget deficits for years!
You can't keep giving tax cuts after tax cuts and expect federal revenue not to plummet, but apparently you republicans delusionally 'think' that is possible. Start listening to true fiscal conservative Bruce Bartlett, who says that the bush tax cuts are no different than spending projects like the bush WARS, and BOTH increase the budget deficits and debt!
Remove all loopholes and broaden the taxpaying base go to a a protrusive flat tax where everyone pays some portion of their income to federal income tax. No write offs no tax credits. But of course you do realize the earn income credit, child tax credit and the mortgage interest credits are all tax loop holes that would be illuminated also right. Or do you think we can just balance the budget from the top without ever touching the middle and lower?
But the way 300 billion a year in revenue does not equal a balanced budget in 6 years because you still have 800 billion a year that is not covered.
Of course, just increased revenue would not balance the budget, since spending cuts are definitely needed as well, especially with the bloated military-industrial complex, that was quadrupled by bush in just 8-years. We didn't even have the DHS in 2001, or the extra one million high-security clearance bozos working for the government.
I'm not only for ending 'most' tax loopholes, tax deductions, tax havens and tax shelters, but also shrinking government too, that was increased entirely too much over the past decade!
Our current national security/defense budget is over $1.3 Trillion, which means time to slash it in half and make those private "contractors" and "defense" contractors find REAL JOBS -- not corporate welfare jobs steadily increasing the military-industrial complex! That's almost $700 Billion right there, and if we cut it say at $100 Billion per year, that's 7 years of savings, which would get the deficit down to $500 Billion.
With some other spending cuts, say another $100 Billion per year, we're down to a deficit of $400 Billion without any revenue increases.
So add in the $100 Billion from just ending tax shelters and tax havens, and we're already at a deficit of $300 Billion.
So I imagine we could get most of the rest from eliminating the majority of tax deductions and tax loopholes. Pretty easy, and much quicker than paul ryan's 28-years of austerity for everyone except the wealth and the corporations.
Just think, if we reduced the top corporate rate to 28% for starters, but eliminated ALL corporate welfare of tax loopholes and deductions, we could probably get half of that deficit of $300 Billion, and individuals would only have to ante up another $150 Billion from their deductions and loopholes.
Obviously, Congress must have the will to completely reform the tax code, and not make it so advantageous to the wealthy like themselves!
Only the ignorant would suggest a consumption tax for our consumer-based economy, since it would slow demand and slow the economy, and increase income inequality even further than the very failed GOP "trickle-down economic insanity" that we've had for the last 11-years!
You surely have no economics savvy at all, and can only parrot the usual fox/rush republican talking points, and never address the fact that the republican sweetheart, paul ryan's austerity budget, is a total JOKE and will not balance the budget for 28-years -- not until 2040!!!!! LOL!
Then, if willard "I do not pay taxes like the little guy" romney, gets his way and adds another $5 Trillion in tax cuts, he will explode the deficits even farther, and it will take 100 years to balance the federal budget!
You economically-challenged republicans sure crack me up! LOL!
Friday, 10 Aug 2012 08:37 AM
By Forrest Jones
Americans don't pay enough in taxes and need to pay more for the good of the country's fiscal health, said Jared Bernstein, former chief economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden and a senior fellow at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.
Congressional Budget Office data show that U.S. households pay less taxes now than they did 30 years ago.
In 1979, the typical household paid 19 percent of their income in federal taxes, while the rate for a typical household today is 11 percent, Bernstein wrote in a Financial Times opinion piece.
http://www.moneynews.com/InvestingAnalysis/Bernstein-Americans-pay-Taxes/2012/08/10/id/448149?s=al&promo_code=FB73-1
This is what happens when you run out of other peoples money, next they are coming for you.
I would jump for joy if I only had to pay 20% in taxes. More than happy too.
I would also like to know what the state, local, property and all the misc. taxes were back in 1979?
But willard romney would be crying if he had to pay his FAIR SHARE in the 35% tax bracket, where even those that derive their income from working and not investments, pay an average 22%, but willard pays 13.9% in 2010, and most likely much less in the years before!
OK 'smart guy,' your boy paul ryan cannot balance the budget until 2040 -- 28 years from now -- with massive 'spending-only' cuts, and you want President Obama and the Dems to balance it overnight?
Where's the justice in that.....oh right.....just like he should have fixed the unemployment problem overnight too! LOL!
You're completely forgetting that it has taken us over a decade to get to this point (actually, I believe the problem started in 1981 as saint ronnie tripled the national debt in 8-years). But even if we left the bloated military-industrial complex alone (that costs us twice your figure of $700 Billion, since DHS, intelligence, pensions, health care, etc.....are not in the "defense" budget), your figure of $100 Billion could be doubled by making sure all the corporations were paying taxes again, to $200 Billion.....which makes a $1.1 Trillion budget deficit balanced in less than 6-years!
See smoker......LESS than 6-years, while the rabid paul ryan cannot balance the budget for 28-years, and that's with HIS math! LOL!
It took us 11-years to get to this point, and if taxes were raised on both the wealthy and corporations, we could balance the budget in HALF the time it took to dig this hole!
___________________
What a joke of a post, Occupy has no clue how to add....lol
President Obama's budget proposal for fiscal 2012 was voted on in the Democrat controlled Senate and was voted down 97-0.
President Obama's budget proposal for fiscal 2013 was voted on in the House and was voted down 414-0.
Not a SINGLE DEMOCRAT voted for President Obama budget proposals. Wonder why??....lol
Paul Ryan's budget passed the House with both Democrat and Republican votes, the Senate refused to allow a vote because they know several Democrats will have to vote for it, or they will lose their seat.
I would prefer the Connie Mack Penny Plan.
Across the board cuts, real cuts, no more baseline budgeting.
That is 1% cut across the board, including the military.
That is 1 cent out of every dollar spent, ACROSS THE BOARD.
At some point transition to a FairTax plan, where all American's are treated as equals, rich or poor, black or while, gay or straight.
It would be based on consumption, what you buy is what you consume, is what you are taxed on.
Now go Occupy a classroom and learn how to add and subtract before posting again.
It was republican party politics as usual, and only used to make it harder to get a bi-partisan budget together, and you keep parroting this same B.S. over and over again, since you're the PROBLEM!
Time for you to go back to the fox political network for more of your daily republican talking points! LOL!
I do see that all you had was personal attacks as usual, and couldn't address the fact that ryan couldn't balance HIS austerity budget of draconian spending cuts for TWENTY EIGHT YEARS! LOL!
How about how he bought his home in Chicago? Maybe we start there?
How about college transcripts, should we be aloud to review those as well?
Mr. Romney may not have done anything illegal , nor immoral...should have stopped right there.