Harry Reid is still bringing up Romney’s taxes. Here he is a few days ago:
Senate Majority leader Harry Reid tells George Knapp of KLAS his “source” is a “long time friend, a very wealthy person he’s known for 30 years who’s had business dealings with Bain Capital.” He told him Romney “hasn’t paid taxes like you and I for 10 years.” He adds, “he can’t give us his tax returns because it would be the end of his campaign for sure”
The end of his campaign eh?
Well, that bastion of conservative thought, the New York Times, disagrees:
Mr. Romney has insisted that his returns from 2010, and preliminary returns for 2011 (until he provides a final version) are enough for voters to evaluate his fitness for office. But even though he has not released his returns from earlier years, the 2010 return sheds some light on those years.
That’s because Mr. Romney paid income tax to foreign countries, and as result claimed in 2010 a $129,697 foreign tax credit, which he used to offset taxes he owed in the United States. American taxpayers who claim the foreign tax credit are required to report their total foreign taxes paid and tax credits used for the previous 10 years. So that return contains foreign tax data going back to 2000.
The good news for Mr. Romney is the forms suggest that he paid at least some federal income tax every year, as he has said he did. He used the foreign tax credit every year to offset his taxes in the United States, and American taxpayers can’t use a tax credit if they owe no federal income tax. This casts even more doubt on the claim by the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, attributed to an unnamed Bain Capital source, that Mr. Romney paid no income taxes during that time.
Of course they have to throw an elbow here or there:
But the data does suggest that Mr. Romney was able to reduce his taxable income in 2009 to a very low level, and thus might have paid relatively little tax — even if it did, as Mr. Romney claims, amount to at least 13 percent of his taxable income. Tax experts also said it is theoretically possible, though highly unlikely, that he paid no federal income tax in 2009. At the same time, an unusually high foreign tax credit in 2008 raises questions about the size and source of Mr. Romney’s foreign income that year and how it was treated for tax purposes.
I find it hard to believe that someone would want to reduce their taxable income….oh wait:
[Diane] Feinstein. OpenSecrets.org lists her as the seventh-wealthiest senator, with a net worth between $44 million and $94 million, according to her latest disclosure forms. And, just like Romney, she keeps a portion of it in offshore accounts. Her most recent reports say she has an unspecified amount (at least $1 million) “held independently by the spouse or independent child” in Coral Growth Investments, Ltd., in St. Peter Port, Guernsey. Guernsey, a tax haven, is a small island in the English Channel that early this year drew the ire of a British Labour-party leader for helping wealthy Brits dodge taxes. The California senator also has between $500,000 and $1 million in a fund called Cevian Capital II L.L.C. in Jersey, another of the Channel Islands. According to her latest forms, that holding generated between $15,000 and $50,000 in capital gains, interest, and dividends. Feinstein has another $1,000 to $15,000 in Mauritius, an island nation in the Indian Ocean off Madagascar that is an up-and-coming tax haven.
Like Feinstein, Richard Blumenthal is on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Also like Feinstein, he has sheltered funds from taxes in the past — $15,000 to $50,000 in a hedge fund held by his wife in the Cayman Islands, to be exact. That might not sound like a huge number, but his most recent disclosure forms say he made $50,000 to $100,000 from the fund in capital gains, dividends, and interest…
[Frank] Lautenberg appears to be in a similar situation. The New Jerseyan is the fifth-wealthiest senator, with a net worth that, in 2006, was six times the Senate’s average. His most recent forms show that his wife’s family has between $500,000 and $1 million in Port Louis, Mauritius. The money is in a real-estate private-equity fund that does its actual investing in India, and the earnings it generates are subject to taxes, as one of his representatives told National Review Online.
…Then there’s John Kerry, the richest person in the Senate. He is considered wealthy because of the fortune of his wife, ketchup heiress Teresa Heinz Kerry, whose wealth came largely from her previous husband, Henry John Heinz III. The senator’s 2010 disclosure forms (the latest available online) show that she had at least $2 million in a fund in Guernsey at filing time.
Note, these figures come from disclosure forms. They didn’t release their tax records.
In the end this is all about trying to make the rich into villains which I really don’t understand. The rich took risks to become successful and wealthy. They worked hard. Good for them. Why make them out to be the bad guy? As I’m sure you have heard time and time again, not ONE poor person has given you a job.
But instead people in this country want to penalize those who make more money than they do. According to this new Pew poll 58% of Americans believe the rich don’t pay enough in taxes. So 58% believe that the richer someone gets the more they should pay, percentage wise, then they do. That’s jealousy folks. That is someone who doesn’t like the fact that someone else makes more than them. How else to explain it? Is it fair for the middle class guy down the street to pay 15% in taxes but force the rich guy to pay 30%? All the while the poor guy sitting at home collecting welfare pays next to nothing in taxes?
Nope.
But it will help balance the budget says the envious. Again….nope:
Want to balance the budget on the backs of the top 1 percent? According to CBO figures, the government would need to tax them at a rate of almost 100 percent. But doing so would make the top 1 percent poor — so, next year, the government would have to tax the top 2 percent.
This is where the middle class comes in. Politicians know the real potential for tax revenue lies with the middle class. Middle-income Americans far outnumber the rich and, at least for now, are taxed at relatively low rates. But even if we tapped the middle class, we’d have to raise tax rates by a staggering amount.
To balance the budget, we’d have to triple tax rates on every household earning over $100,000. Alternatively, we could merely double tax rates, but we’d have to do it on every household earning over $75,000. Not only are there not enough rich households to tax, there are barely enough middle-income households.
With the top 2 percent taxed into poverty, the year after that, politicians would need to go after the top 3 percent. Keep going down that path and, eventually, they’ll come for you.
In fact raising taxes to penealize the successful…er, I mean to “balance the budget” will just ensure we go further into recession [pdf]:
Fiscal adjustments based upon spending cuts are much less costly in terms of output losses than tax based ones. In particular, spending-based adjustments have been associated with mild and short-lived recessions, in many cases with no recession at all.Instead, tax-based adjustments have been followed but prolonged and deep recessions. The difference is remarkable in its size and cannot be explained by different monetary policies during the two type of adjustments. In fact,we find that the mild asymmetric (and lagged) response of short-term rates cannot explain the difference between the two types of adjustments: heterogeneity in the response of monetary policy appears with a lag of one to two years, while the heterogenous response of output growth to EB and TB adjustments is immediate. We find that the heterogeneity in the effects oft he two types of fiscal adjustment (tax-based and spending-based) is mainly due to the response of private investment, rather than that to consumption growth.
But dammit…it’s just not fair!
Sigh…..
See author page
I find it hard to believe that someone would want to reduce their taxable income….oh wait:
OBAMA.
In 2011, the Obama’s claimed a $47,564 home mortgage interest deduction on their house in Chicago, which they bought in 2005 for $1.65 million.
That equates to $13,318 in savings on their federal tax bill, according to an analysis by Michael Gillen, director of the tax group at the Philadelphia law firm Duane Morris.
BTW, Average homeowners with incomes between $40,000 and $75,000 who claim the same deduction save just $523 in taxes, economists at the University of Pennsylvania found.
Average homeowners with incomes greater than $250,000 who claim the deduction save only $5,459 on their tax bills.
Renters, of course, save nothing.
Nor do the millions of Americans in low-cost homes who pay mortgage interest each year, but don’t itemize their deductions because it is not worthwhile for them to do so.
The Obama’s paid an effective tax rate of about 20.5 percent in 2011 on adjusted gross income of $789,674.
The rate would have been higher if not for the mortgage interest deduction.
Wait a minute, this means Reid and his secret friend are dirty lying skunks, how about that! Who could have guessed?
I work for a wealthy man. His motivation for keeping this company going is not to provide a job for me. His motivation is to make money. The bigger the company gets, the more money he makes, and the more people he has to hire!
And the bigger the company gets, the harder he has to work himself, to keep track of it all. When he’s made enough money, he’ll stop expanding. Why should he work harder without a greater reward? No more jobs for us.
Whether it’s his decision that he’s made enough, or some bureaucrat telling him that, the result will be the same: no more jobs.
He just built himself a 2.5 million dollar mansion. Well, good for him! I hope he starts building a 5 million dollar one soon… because he’ll have to hire more people like you and me to pay for it. And he’ll have to hire more contractors to build it. And more people will have jobs supplying the materials to build that house.
Good for him. Because the more money he makes, the more secure I am in this job.
I own a partnership in a small cellphone store. We’re both doing without a lot of nice things to keep it going, financially. We think that within the next two years, we’ll be able to hire two more people. We’re not doing this to provide jobs for a couple of people we don’t know yet, we’re doing it to provide money for ourselves.
If we can’t make enough of a profit to satisfy ourselves, we won’t stay open, and in two years, there will be two more people who won’t have jobs who otherwise would have.
Wether it’s poor business that limits our profits, or the government. Either way, same result.
And, no, there never comes a point where we’ve “made enough money”, because anything we make more than we need to live our lives will be invested in other areas, creating more jobs.
Or did you think that we’d just stuff it in a mattress somewhere?
And I cannot take the mortgage deduction because I paid cash for my home. What a reward for investing wisely and not borrowing!
@Petercat:
That seems to be a foreign idea to liberal/progressives. They think that the motivation is to steal money from others, or keep money from it’s rightful owners, the government.
They do not understand wealth creation. To them, the guy pushing the broom at night should make as much as the guy running the machines, who should make as much as the guy’s supervisor, who should make as much as the maintenance foreman who keeps the machines running, who should make as much as the engineer who designed the machine, or machine dies, who should make as much as the guy who founded the company and came up with the idea for the product that the company sells.
What they fail to realize is that without that guy who founded the company, they might all be pounding the pavement looking for a job.
The Conservative wing seems to be the most obsessed with Romney’s wealth. We just want to know what his actions show regarding his tax returns for at least five years—whether they be criminal or not.
@Liberal1 (objectivity): And we want to see Obama’s school records. We just want to know what his actions show regarding his character, seriousness of purpose, and integrity.
Wish in one hand…
@Liberal1 (objectivity):
I suppose that you would think that the guy who stops a mugging is more concerned with the victim’s wealth than the mugger, too.
Point of fact, conservatives don’t care one whit about Romney’s wealth itself. We just want to stop the muggers from latching on to it like they own it.
Compare and contrast.
ROMNEY:
took no salary during his term of office in Massachusetts, no salary as head of the Salt Lake City Olympics.
OBAMA:
took the salary as state senator, senator and president, then used taxpayers, not salary, to take multiples of vacations.
Mr. Romney is running for President of the United States.
This is a position of Trust.
Ronald Reagan said, “Trust but Verify.”
Mr. Romney has said, “Trust me,” re his tax returns.
It is not unreasonable for voters to want to “Verify.
It is not just liberals who want to see Romney’s tax returns.
It is 63% of American voters who do.
The longer Mr. Romney delays, the more suspicious it appears.
Obama released 8 years of tax returns
GW Bush 10 years
Clinton 12 years
GHW Bush 14 years
George Romney 12 years.
What is the problem, Mr. Romney? Release your tax returns.
And I’d like to see every document with Barak Obama’s (or Barry Soetoro’s) name on it, but that’s not gonna happen either.
There in nothing criminal in Romney’s tax returns or in anything he’s had a hand in, he’s a straight arrow.
Boring, I know…
@DGarr:
And just why is it that we must verify Romney’s past but have never been able to verify Obama’s?
Or would you argue that the ONLY thing that matters in a presidential candidate is his tax paying history, that NO other history is relevant?
Dammit, I am getting TIRED of you hypocrites.
Reid seems to have moved the goalposts (a major fallacy of logic).
Now he only says:
Romney “hasn’t paid taxes like you and I for 10 years.”
Oh!
Really?
You mean someone whose income comes from dividends, interest and annuities pays taxes differently than most people who use ”the Short Form?”
Well color me DUH!
LOL!
It’s kind of fun to watch all these conservatives bending over backwards to make Romney’s secret-keeping seem ok. The bottom line is that Romney is a man of very little ;principle, unless that principle is making money by whatever way he can. Romney ran a company that occasionally bought undervalued American businesses and then closed the company, throwing all the employees out of work, and sold off the company’s assets, pocketing some of the money into the pockets of Romney and other investors and executives of Bain capital. Romney then arranged for that company’s products to be made in China or other such places so the American workers Romney fired could not get jobs doing that they did before. A lot of conservatives also said that was OK, too, and for some strange reason called Romney “a job creator.” Then we learn that Romney hid millions of his own money in foreign banks in places like the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, and Switzerland, to name a few, so he wouldn’t have to pay US taxes on it. Many of us suspect that Romney accepted an offer from the IRS to admit committing a felony by cheating the IRS in exchange for not being prosecuted. Now is this the kind of sneaky, low-life money-grubbing creep you conservatives want in the Oval Office? That’s what it’s all about, not jealousy over a guy who is filthy rich getting even richer by underhanded deals he doesn’t admit to publicly. In my humble opinion, I do not believe Romney has the character or the integrity to become US President. I am a veteran, I have always paid my full taxes, even when I wore the uniform of the US Army, so it kind of burns me up when I see a guy like Romney, who has bundle of money, not only never served his country, and his five sons never served, but Romney also tries to pay less than his fair share of taxes to support this country’s armed forces, that I served in. Romney won’t get my vote, and certainly not the votes of any of my family, some of whom are still in the service.
@JayMagoo:
What value does this statement have:
“Many of us suspect that Romney accepted an offer from the IRS to admit committing a felony by cheating the IRS in exchange for not being prosecuted.” Without evidence to back up what “many” of you suspect, this is just another nut-job accusation.
After all, I suspect you of being a drunk (My reason? Your rambling, nonsensical post above.) So, since I suspect that, you should automatically be arrested and imprisoned for public drunkenness.
Unlike you, most conservatives don’t scream about flaws in the politicians not of our philosophy while ignoring flaws in those with whom we agree.
As long as having money offshore is legal, I don’t have a problem. Apparently, neither do Feinstein, Boxer, and Pelosi. Have you scorched them on any liberal websites for their overseas investments? No? Better sober up, buddy, your hypocrisy really shows up when you’re drunk.
“Now is this the kind of sneaky, low-life money-grubbing creep you conservatives want in the Oval Office?”
No. That’s why I’m voting against Obama in November.
And how is it that a candidate’s lack of military service only matters when that candidate is a conservative? *cough* ObamaClintonGorePelosiBoxer *cough*
I suppose I could have been a little bit more polite to a fellow veteran, if you really are one, but I’m just getting tired of you liberal hypocrites, your refusal to see the faults in your own people, your selective outrages, and, yes, again, your hypocrisy.
….He’s just trying to divert attention away from all his victims and hoping they don’t come forward…
Obama’s Illinois gives us a mini-example of how people avoid taxes.
In 2011 Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn signed a bill adding another dollar a pack to the state’s cigarette tax, as a result in Cook County, the tax on smokes is now $4.66 a pack.
In Indiana it’s $0.995.
In Missouri it’s only $0.17.
So, who wants to guess what happens?
Pirates.
By one year later 75 percent of cigarettes in Chicago didn’t have the proper tax stamps.
A clerk at a tobacco shop in Hammond, Ind., less than a mile from the state line, says business has doubled since the latest increase began at the end of June, 2012.
There really is a Laffer Curve.
We are hitting it in one area of taxes after another.
People will find a way to avoid these higher taxes whether it is loopholes, which are legal, or piracy, which is not.
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/05/26/illinois-to-fix-medicaid-shortfall-by-promoting-smoking/
http://www.myfoxchicago.com/story/19093872/2012/07/23/cigarette-smuggling-on-the-rise-as-taxes-skyrocket
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/07/28/the-tobacco-pirates/