The Romney Tax Loophole

From Robert Reich: http://robertreich.org/post/16027950443

Robert Reich

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

After refusing for weeks to release his taxes, Mitt Romney now says he’ll do so — by tax day, April 15. But the real news is what Romney has now admitted about his taxes.

It’s not how much Romney earns. Everyone knows he’s comfortably in the top one-tenth of one percent.

It’s how much he pays of it in taxes. Romney says he pays a tax rate of “about 15 percent.”

That’s lower than the tax rate most of America’s middle class face and far lower than the 35 percent top rate after the Bush tax cut. (To put this in perspective, recall that the top income tax rate under Dwight Eisenhower was 91 percent.)

Newt Gingrich immediately pounced on Mitt’s admission as evidence that Newt’s proposed flat 15 percent tax is ideal, and wants to call it the “Romney tax.” Newt’s flat tax is a fraud. It would dramatically lower the taxes of most of the top 1 percenters and increase the taxes of most of the rest of us.

Continue reading at: http://robertreich.org/post/16027950443