what romney paid?

Something the Dog Said wrote: You guys are such tools! He manipulated his income to take advantage of loopholes in the tax codes that are not available to the middle class. For example, $13 million of his 2010, 2011 income was in "carried interest" that was taxed at the capital gains rate. However that "carried interest" was actually compensation earned through his equity fund. Instead of being paid salary, as would 99.9% of Americans, fund managers take their payment in the form of equity/profits which instead of being taxed at their personal income tax level, are only taxed at capital gains rate of 15%. It has been estimated that closing that loophole which is only available to a limited number of fund managers would save the US over $4 billion per year from only 25 fund managers, including Romney, Soras, etc. So Romney at the same time that Romney was leveraging the equity out of US companies at the cost of thousands of jobs, he was able to also dodge paying full taxes.

He also manipulated his IRA investments as well. If you or I borrow from our IRA for investment purposes, that is taxed at 35%. However, Romney structured his IRA in the Cayman Islands which are not covered by that law, thus allowing him to freely borrow from the IRA for investment purposes without paying US taxes on it.

Whether or not these are legal, they certainly are not ethical, particularly for someone who claims to want to help the middle class.

You betccha - altering that tax law would net the general government a whopping 3/10ths of 1% of the average deficit Obama's administration has racked up each and every year he has sat behind the Resolute Desk. Why, if the tax code had been changed when it should have been, the deficit accumulated under his administration would only be $12 Billion less than it is. I'm absolutely positive that we wouldn't be in this jam at all if only the general government hadn't had to borrow that additional $4 Billion a year to pay for all of its charity programs, aren't you?

Doesn't the left have anything other than the politics of envy to offer in 2012?

LadyJazzer wrote: Oh, is Kerry running? I was unaware....

And where does it say we can't discuss Democrats who ran for President as well? And last I checked, Kerry has still been running for the Senate and is next due up in 2014.

But you know my point. If you Dems are going to make a big deal about Romney's tax return then you should be consistent and whine about it when your candidates get the same or even better rates.

Candidates? How about elected officials who wring their hands about the unfairness of it all while lining their own pockets via the same code they are vociferously decrying? Our president declares he has hundreds of thousands of dollars that he doesn't need that he should be paying taxes on, but why then doesn't he ignore the deductions the code offers and simply declare all of his income the same way the middle class has to and pay the tax bill that results? Why doesn't Kerry do this as well, or Warren Buffet? The answer to that question is fairly simple, isn't it? Capital gains are not ordinary income - they are gains made off of income that has already been taxed once prior to being invested. That their capital thus invested grows in value is a good thing, right? We want more of this good thing, don't we? Don't we tax that which we want less of heavily, such as the tax levied on alcohol and cigarettes and shouldn't we tax that which we want more of lightly so that those who engage in desired behavior have a greater incentive to engage in desired behavior than undesired behavior?

The money that was invested in the Cayman Islands IRA had to come from somewhere before it was invested into the Cayman Islands IRA. Why would you invest what had already been taxed once into another investment with built in penalties for deciding how to use the fruits of your efforts as you desired to use them if alternatives to such punitive and nonsensical investments existed? One would have to be a fool to keep the fruits of their efforts in such a regressive system when better alternatives were available. Color me crazy, but I'd rather not have the current fool occupying the Oval Office for another 4 years when better alternatives are available as well.

If we wish to avoid having money invested in better systems than the regressive one currently in place, perhaps, just perhaps mind you, the answer is to take the regressive elements out of our current system to make it as, if not more, attractive than the one in place in the Cayman Islands. I know that sounds like a crazy idea, but it just might work.

This is typical conservative responses. Rather than address the issue of whether Romney was able to pay at a lesser tax rate due to manipulations of his income and taking advantage of tax loopholes available only to a very select few, deflect instead to rants against the deficit, which as I recall, was largely due to a Republican president. As I said, you guys really are tools.

Something the Dog Said wrote: This is typical conservative responses. Rather than address the issue of whether Romney was able to pay at a lesser tax rate due to manipulations of his income and taking advantage of tax loopholes available only to a very select few, deflect instead to rants against the deficit, which as I recall, was largely due to a Republican president. As I said, you guys really are tools.

But consider this, when Republican candidates want to make the tax code much simpler with a flat tax that would have both Romney & Obama paying more than they currently do, the Left calls them unrealistic and imply a complicated tax code is more fair. Guess not, the complicated tax code is easier to add loopholes, etc to.

Except that the flat tax codes that the Republicans have proposed would increase the tax burden on the middle class while lowering it for the 1%.

Something the Dog Said wrote: This is typical conservative responses. Rather than address the issue of whether Romney was able to pay at a lesser tax rate due to manipulations of his income and taking advantage of tax loopholes available only to a very select few, deflect instead to rants against the deficit, which as I recall, was largely due to a Republican president. As I said, you guys really are tools.

Yes he was able to pay a lesser tax rate on money that had already been tax. And the tax rate is available to all people rich enough to have generated that much money. I'm interested in how many of the super-rich sign on the the "Buffet Rule" in the coming weeks?

The difference between us Dog is that I am not envious of the success of others. There exists not the slightest doubt in my mind that the money will be more wisely and beneficially spent by Romney himself than it could ever hope to be by the general government. I harbor not a single doubt that the general welfare of the union will be better served by allowing Romney to distribute the fruits of his efforts as he deems proper than it would be by the general government appropriating it and distributing it as they deem proper.

A tax structure which is intentional is not a loophole Dog. No one, at least no one who is being intellectually honest, could ever hope to sustain the argument that the lower tax rate on capital gains was an unintentional action on the part of the Congress. The tax rate charged on capital gains has been lower than the tax rate on salaries for quite some time now - mostly because the capital that is invested has already been taxed at least once before and it has been deemed that it is more beneficial to the general welfare of the union if capital is invested in the economy where both can grow than it is to have capital held and on the sidelines.

When capital is invested it is placed at risk of being lost - unless, of course, it is invested into something that the general government has decided to guarantee - like the mortgage securities issued by its GSEs. The reward for risking such a loss is that you get to keep more of what results if the risk pays off and you experience a gain instead of a loss of your capital. That is not a loophole - it is a deliberate tax policy passed into law by the general government to encourage those with "hundreds of thousands of dollars" they "don't need" in capital to risk losing that capital investing in the growth of the union's economy instead of holding onto it.

The Liberals GOP Twin wrote:

Something the Dog Said wrote: This is typical conservative responses. Rather than address the issue of whether Romney was able to pay at a lesser tax rate due to manipulations of his income and taking advantage of tax loopholes available only to a very select few, deflect instead to rants against the deficit, which as I recall, was largely due to a Republican president. As I said, you guys really are tools.

Yes he was able to pay a lesser tax rate on money that had already been tax. And the tax rate is available to all people rich enough to have generated that much money. I'm interested in how many of the super-rich sign on the the "Buffet Rule" in the coming weeks?

You really need to work on your research and comprehension skills. What Romney did was to take his untaxed compensation as equity/profits in the investment fund. Then he withdrew it as a capital gain. This is unavailable to anyone other than a few fund managers. If you or I tried to take our compensation for our labors as equity, it would still be taxed at our personal income tax rate, then again as capital gains. Romney, Soros and a few others have an explicit loophole that only benefits fund managers.

Something the Dog Said wrote: Except that the flat tax codes that the Republicans have proposed would increase the tax burden on the middle class while lowering it for the 1%.

Now that I will agree with. Plus, off the top of my head, I'm pretty sure all of the Republican candidate's flat tax proposals wouldn't even tax capital gains at all.

Now back to Romney. If you object to what he did, which appears to be fully legal, do you also object when Democrats do the same thing?

Instead of directing this at Romney, I think you should be calling for a major overhaul of our tax code instead. As I've already pointed out, many of us middle class folks get nice tax breaks too like paying zero percent on capital gains, paying regular income at 15%, credits, and a nice tax break on our mortgage. I don't think my tax situation is very unusual and I can't think that I've ever had to pay as high a rate as Romney did. I can find it if necessary, but as I recall according to the CBO most middle class people pay an effective federal income tax rate of under 10% (I think it's close to 7%).