Mitt Romney - How do you Feel?

yeah, let's change the rules!

What do you want to pay more tax on?

His tax rate will be the tip of the iceberg. A good portion of his profits are trickling down... to laywers and accountants in the Cayman Islands.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/romney-parks-millions-offshore-tax-haven/story?id=15378566

falco, I want to pay more taxes on my capital gains, especially the capital gains classified as carried interest I made by working, which is taxed way below the salary I made by working.

You are, of course, aware that this is currently permitted. Time to man up and show your commitment to higher taxes!

By that logic, people who support lower taxes should stop using government-provided roads to show their commitment to limited government.

I guess that's about the best you can come up with. The more direct response "if you want lower taxes you should just pay less" doesn't work because that approach is not permitted under current law.

As an hourly worker, paying taxes on regular wages, I find the use of multiple tax ploys by the "1%" irksome to say the least. Deferred payments. Options. And Mr. Romney's faux pas - taking investment management salary as capital gains - carried interest - what a country!

He's not doing anything "wrong"; 15% is what is taxed on interest income and capital gains, versus (up to) 35% on your actual LABOR.

The imbalance just happens to be that Romney OWNS (a LOT!), and doesn't have to WORK for a living, like the rest of the 99%

Personally, I think it's a fair rate. What's UNFAIR (and in my opinion, unconstitutional), is taxing a man's labor at all.

It's not that Romney's not paying "enough" taxes (honestly, $445K for one man in one year just to the feds is WAY more than enough), but that the rest of us are subject to an unconstitutional tax on our labor.

I say repeal the income tax altogether. Tax ONLY interest and capital gains. Ron Paul actually crunched the numbers and found that eliminating the income tax would cut 60% from the current federal budget, which would throw us back to spending levels of ... get this ... 1997.

Could you imagine a federal government the size and scope of what we had in 1997? It's really not much of a stretch.

There is nothing wrong with what Romney does personally with his taxes. It is all permitted by laws drafted and lobbied for by people like him. Therefore it is legal and I don't blame him for taking advantage of it. That is how democracy works. But it also works on information and once he becomes the republican nominee and releases his tax returns there will be no putting that genie back in the bottle, no matter how much certain people will want to focus the conversation to the "gold-plated benefits" of government employees who pay 2-3x what he does in taxes.

Capital gains and dividends should be taxed at ordinary rates. You could make corporate taxes zero for all I care. THAT would be fairer than what we have now.

Just because it is "legal" and a product of a "democracy" does not mean that it is right. Even when Romney was working for Blain Capital, I can assure you his tax rate was still close to the 15% he currently pays. The use of Carried Interest as a means of determining tax rate is an abomination - tolerated by both parties, pushed by lobbyists, and ignored by the generally uninterested public.
Let them eat cake!

"I guess that's about the best you can come up with. The more direct response "if you want lower taxes you should just pay less" doesn't work because that approach is not permitted under current law."

Well that and it's completely unrealistic given that the government doesn't have nearly as much revenue as expenditures. If you want lower taxes, the government has to do (a lot) less stuff, so clearly you should voluntarily stop using all government-provided services, right?

"It's not that Romney's not paying "enough" taxes (honestly, $445K for one man in one year just to the feds is WAY more than enough), but that the rest of us are subject to an unconstitutional tax on our labor."

That's ridiculous. You can call it "unjust" or "unwise" but it's obviously not "unconstitutional" given both the taxing power in Article I, Section 8 and the explicit special preference given to income taxes in the Sixteenth Amendment. Calling an income tax unconstitutional is like calling freedom of speech unconstitutional.

"I say repeal the income tax altogether. Tax ONLY interest and capital gains. Ron Paul actually crunched the numbers and found that eliminating the income tax would cut 60% from the current federal budget, which would throw us back to spending levels of ... get this ... 1997.

Could you imagine a federal government the size and scope of what we had in 1997? It's really not much of a stretch."

Epic math fail. First, there's inflation. It looks like compound inflation was about 35% from 1997 - 2010, so in real dollars the government would be 35% smaller than in 1997. Now, in 2010 defense spending *all* discretionary spending combined, including military spending, was about 39% of the budget. So, if we cut back everything the government does other than social security and medicare by 90%, we'd have the wonderful government you imagine. I'm sure everyone would love it.

Two of the three biggest revenue producers at that point would be social security and medicare taxes, which are also taxes on labor. So you'd still have taxes on labor and despite this our wonderful 1997-style government would do about 10% of what it does today. Huzzah!

Of course, the reasonable way to look at this is what is the tax burden as a fraction of the GDP now versus in 1997. By that measure, the tax burden is about 23% *lower* today than it was in 1997. So all we need to do to return to a 1997-sized revenue base is raise everyone's taxes by about 30%.

what a joke, a group of people grew up in propagandas and brainwashes suddenly awaking?

"Could you imagine a federal government the size and scope of what we had in 1997? It's really not much of a stretch."

"Epic math fail. First, there's inflation. It looks like compound inflation was about 35% from 1997 - 2010, so in real dollars the government would be 35% smaller than in 1997. Now, in 2010 defense spending *all* discretionary spending combined, including military spending, was about 39% of the budget. So, if we cut back everything the government does other than social security and medicare by 90%, we'd have the wonderful government you imagine. I'm sure everyone would love it."

***

Actually, it's not an "epic fail" at all.

Remove the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Bingo. The math works.

Two thoughtful pieces:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/us/politics/why-americans-think-the-tax-rate-is-high-and-why-theyre-wrong.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&adxnnl=1&emc=tha23&adxnnlx=1327072987-MyxTEactPe39DK2Nw2yfrQ

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204555904577168683705018156.html?mod=WSJ_hps_RIGHTTopCarousel_1

The same country that gets its thongs in a bunch when we want to charge extra health insurance for smokers and obese shits, saying the carried interest which enormously favors bubble traders (cause that's what they are.... they "arbitrage" public / private valuations of companies (cash flow) with a mountain of debt (a portion of which is always FDIC insured I might add)) is a "right?"

Carried interest... I bet 0% of minorities and 0% of women benefit from carried interest.... except Romney's maids and his wife.

"Remove the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Bingo. The math works."

Asserting that Iraq and Afghanistan are 35% of the federal budget is not a way to prove you're good at math.

In 2010, the combined cost was about $170 billion. That's about 5% of total federal expenditures. So you were only off by a factor of 7.

More importantly, getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan will be useful steps in reducing the federal deficit, but they're not that material to the discussion about tax rates. Even without them we'd have huge deficits given the current anemic tax base. We need to cut a lot of spending and raise taxes to get the budget under control.

Interest and Dividends are taxed at a regular income rate, not the 15% capital gains rate.

For everyone crying about Romney paying what the system allows those who find the way to pay less to do so, where were your cries while Rangel paid none?

Keep drinking the kool-aid from the partisan whinery.

"Interest and Dividends are taxed at a regular income rate, not the 15% capital gains rate."

Not so for qualified dividends, which are taxed at either 0 or 15%.

Realestateny, I guess you absofkinglutely hate the 0% tax on re capital gain for up to $500k. I mean talk about class warfare! Renters vs 'owners' esp in light of the fact, there continues to be redlining going on, oh the horror! Of being a financial hypocrite.

$500psf! Baby.

What about Romney's Cayman islands investments? That has the potential to hurt him more than his 15% tax rate.

imo Romney is paying at less than 15% which is why he is really really uncomfortable about this. It undouubtedly involves a mixture of offshore investment, carried interest rates, and potentially very aggressive stuffing of investments into tax deferred retirement accounts. I think this is going to be a very very big deal for him

> and potentially very aggressive stuffing of investments into tax deferred retirement accounts

If this is the case, this is a non issue unless your
a) a communist or
b) he becomes president and stamps an IRA amnesty early pull out bill.

what is an issue is that you are only allowed to put a relatively small $ amount into these accounts. So if Romney put investments in at artifically low values that would be where ths issue lies. Rumor is he has some huge amount of $ in IRA's etc. We'll see i guess.

It sounds horrible, but make sense - the top earners actually DO pay more taxes than those who earn less. Today's WSJ lays out the facts pretty well:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204555904577168683705018156.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

Most people don't understand the tax code, and the main stream media doesn't do a good job of explaining it.

bfgross, How does that not trigger an audit?
(the only politician in my lifetime that seemed to have a connect with the IRS is Clinton. So many who screwed with him mysteriously got audited)

>So if Romney put investments in at artifically low values that would be where ths issue lies.
You can only play so much

Anyone can put a zillion dollars in tax free products and bring down their "average" tax rate.

uptowngal
Precisely why everyone opens an LLC if they can instead.

>and the main stream media doesn't do a good job of explaining it.

Is that really the problem or the intention? Wouldnt it lessen the headline to explain it.

Truth, maybe it did? we dont know anything yet.

Isnt the max IRA contribution like 6k?
I doubt he added a zero or 2, particularly in a time where he knew he might run for public office?

You have to be in office 10 or 20 years to have the balls to think you'd get away with it. (ie Rangel)

great! I hope. he's worth ~$300mm. Go get em Mitt

"It sounds horrible, but make sense - the top earners actually DO pay more taxes than those who earn less. Today's WSJ lays out the facts pretty well"

Here's some of the rationale used in that article:

"As for all federal taxes, CBO found that in 2007 the top 1% paid an average rate of a little under 30%, compared to 15.1% for middle-income earners. In calculating this overall tax burden, CBO takes account of payroll taxes, which moves the rate of the lowest 20% of earners into positive territory at 4.7%. CBO also apportions to individuals who are shareholders the tax that corporations pay on corporate profits."

That last sentence is pretty important. If you paid zero taxes but held shares in, e.g., a tech company that is profitable but doesn't pay dividends, according to this data you'd still be "paying taxes" based on your share of that company's taxes. So that data could just as easily mean that rich people own a lot of stock, which we already know.

But the bottom line is that overall as a country we're paying an historically low amount of taxes, and the rich are paying historically low effective tax rates on their share of income. Considering the mess that the budget in, having special tax rates for types of income that is almost exclusively earned by rich people makes sense only in the limited cases where it actually produces more revenue to do so (which seems actually to be true for capital gains rates, unlike a lot of other income--dividends especially).

Romney is as close to Dudley Doright as you're going to get.
What we need is Dick Dastardly.
Where's Rudy when you need him.

Dick Cheney?

David Stockman slams Romney!
Running private equity is not a graduate education in creating jobs, it's a lesson in stripping a company of cash.

http://video.msnbc.msn.com/dylan-ratigan-show/46106868#null

what about mitt's polygamist heritage? has anyone seen his long-form birth cert?

What about your double pointy bottom heritage?
How's your ex-wife doing?

jordyn and her infinite wisdom is back, mixing in the well-oiled pablum that the government has a problem cause its "revenues" or not matching up to its "expenditures".

Get a clue already! using that type of lingo to blunt the real issues. what a maroon. what else has msnbc taught you lately?

roads is your example??? roads???!!!! really?!!!!

how about that most nycers that have a few sheckels left in their pockets can't escape the long arm of gvmt reaching in on TOLLS on those ROADS and crossings to subsidize pet projects or whatever else is the flavor of the day supporting the gvmt chicanary and its flock...ROADS!!! continue to be paid for many times over for those who can afford to drive these days...roads, ahahahahahahaahahahahaha....

I think Stockman is 100% spot on. If Mitt goes into a general election saying his experience running private equity gives him insight into job creation, he's sorely wrong. There's nothing wrong with what private equity does for the most part, ony that it generally does not create employment, it's about stripping cash flow from companies, selling assets, or flipping the business to someone.

and making them more efficient

Depends on your definition of "efficient."

Just this weekend the Times did a great piece on how much more "efficient" China is than the U.S. in producing iPhones.

The only problem is that "efficiency" comes with 12-hour workdays, six-day workweeks, $17/day paychecks, and warehousing workers in dorms on-site.

Does 15% sounds low? yes. However, it's not as low as people think, citing the articles above.

Problem is, if taxes on cap gains & investment go up, then capital moves overseas to lower-tax venues, along w it US jobs.

that's why we need Ron Paul

obamie is just salivating i tell ya, salivating. he is the definition of a one-term president, yet the republicans just keep pushing bafoons to the forefront. he can run against any of these idiots and beat them despite his horrible record thus far....

yes.. Ron Paul!!!

"Problem is, if taxes on cap gains & investment go up, then capital moves overseas to lower-tax venues, along w it US jobs."

Such utter and complete bullshit. The US has a global tax system. It does not matter what the rates are elsewhere, and American pays US tax rates.

not if he kept it at UBS

Perhaps it is the platform you are required to support as the Republican nominee that filters out the non-buffoons.

Yes, Jason. And if that company (american or non-US) is lured to another domicile w lower taxes, guess what?

and making them more efficient
--------
NO! It's not about making the businesses more efficient, it's about extracting cash, or selling them for a higher price. To do that the businesses may be combined , leveraged up, split up, or just resold to a higher bidder. The question of whether a particular business is more efficient in its use of capital does not necessarily get answered.

"Problem is, if taxes on cap gains & investment go up, then capital moves overseas to lower-tax venues, along w it US jobs."

I'm Goldman Sachs and I approved this message.

aren't taxes on capital gains and dividends higher in europe

Malthus, that is so true! Well said.

Why would businesses move because individual rates are higher? Unless you renounce US citizenship, you still pay US rates? Try to make sense.

Capital gains taxes range from 0% to ordinary rates if you look across the OECD. And there have been many, many, many studies on the effect of the tax rate versus economic growth, capital formation, etc - and at BEST there is a very weak correlation. The average study shows there is no impact.

...but its in the interest of the 1% to perpetuate the myth that its clear-cut, despite the consensus of economists. (I said CONSENSUS, not what this or that individual says.)

tax cuts in gen'l for the wealthy as stimulus is a massive con job--more trickle-up crap
props to david stockman for admitting the failure of supply-side

rich people who already spend way less than they earn will not run out and spend more based on what, for them, represents a tiny saving via a tax cut

that mid-america buys this shit speaks of brilliant propagandizing by rove-scum

You tax haters are terrible at making your point. The best argument, by far, in favor of low capital gains rates is that they tend to produce more revenue rather than less since people are more willing to realize gains when rates are lower. There seems to be pretty good evidence for this point, and then the question mostly becomes what the rate is that maximizes revenue--then the low tax people and the pay for government people are all happy.

That rationale does not apply to carried interest at all, and pretty weakly to dividends since the taxpayers aren't the ones deciding whether to realize the income or not, so there's no good rationale for either of those low rates that almost exclusively benefit rich people with lower rates than middle class people pay.

Actually, the academic evidence for lower capital gains taxes creating more revenue over the LONG term is also mixed at best. For a few years after a cut in the rate is made, yes people are more willing to sell, but over the long run the overall impact on the economy, factoring all things in, is ambiguous at best.

Separately - Amid Attacks on Private Equity, Efforts to Study Its Value

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/01/24/amid-attacks-on-private-equity-efforts-to-study-its-value/?nl=business&emc=dlbka31

Tax Preference for Capital Gains Doesn’t Make Sense

http://www.offthechartsblog.org/tax-preference-for-capital-gains-doesnt-make-sense/