It's Your Taxes Stupid.

The Right-wing media has no problem entertaining weird conspiracy theories and spending 3 years demanding not just a certificate of live birth but the actual long-form birth certificate from a sitting president and calling him a Kenyan Socialist Manchurian candidate all the while.
However....
Asking a guy running for the same office to show his previous years taxes that admits he has Swiss bank accounts, Bermuda and the Cayman Island accounts, has 100 million dollars in an IRA and has lied about his taxes in the past and has had to retroactively file new taxes just to be eligible to run for Governor in Massachusetts is for some strange reason an outrage.
Have we already forgotten another famous Republican named Spiro Agnew that pleaded no contest to tax evasion after being elected?

 

Or a famous Democrat, Franklin Delano Roosevelt who refused to release his tax records during his presidency? And please tell us why Hubert Humphrey wouldn't release ANY returns? Who knows? Who cares?

Actually, I don't see what you're getting so worked up about. Tax records are private information. It's not like a candidate is required to release them in order to hold the office of President. Nor does a sitting president have to release his tax records. If Obama declined to reveal his taxes, it wouldn't bother me one bit. He hasn't been transparent on a lot of things he promised, so why should his taxes be any different?

 

Why is anyone from the right wasting any time talking about Romney's tax returns (prepared by the countries best lawyers, not Romney) as opposed to the tax returns not being filled out by those unemployed due to Obama's policies. The left is putting up a smoke screen and the right is having problems seeing through it. In the mean time, 22.5% of Americans employables are not.

 

Amen! This whole "story" was concocted to distract attention from BO's 4 years of failure.
If we are going to focus on taxes let's not waste time on a guy who pays 1000x what everyone here pays combined, let's focus on the 50+% of the people who pay nothing or get back more money than they paid in.

 

Only presidential candidate EVER to have a Swiss bank account. Only presidential candidate EVER to have lied about his taxes and then retroactively filed them. Only presidential candidate EVER to pay 13% tax rate. Questions? You're damn right there should be questions.

 

Does that make Obama the only president ever to have a Swiss bank account? Oh! And John Kerry has and had Swiss bank accounts.

 

Perhaps you should question the source of this information before you start getting all lathered up. The first ever.....? Be careful, you might be relying on Harry Reid's mystery man!

*I still think it's a good thing to have a candidate capable of becoming a millionaire prior to coming to DC. If you'll remember, BO lamented about his massive debt load despite he & his wife both being laywers & having been published authors.

 

But NOW Romney is saying "Trust Me".

And BTW In addition to the Swiss bank account, the Cayman Island accounts, the 100 million IRA account, the previous lies about his taxes, I forgot about "Son of Boss".

 

Well, it's his word against whose?

...and haven't we (those of us here) been willing to accept BO at his word in regards to the whole birther issue, despite some pretty damning evidence to the contrary?

 

Why should anyone care if Romney has accounts in the Caymans or in Switzerland? If so, they're perfectly legal. Just as perfectly legal as when Ted Kennedy moved his assets to Tortola, BVI. Or when John Kerry docked his yacht in Rhode Island instead of Massachusetts in order to avoid taxes. All perfectly legal. As Ted Kennedy and John Kerry could attest, tax evasion is illegal; tax avoidance is not. The lefties are chasing windmills on this one, folks.

 

He paid 2.5 to 3 times the rate I did. No President gig for me. Damn.

 

That brings up a good question, Stu. Why should anyone pay 2.5 to 3 times the rate that anyone else pays?

 

Because there aren't that many rich people and we can make them.

But in reality, I think it is a good question. A 'percentage' already means that those that make more, pay more. And, I think if we had a simpler tax system without the breaks and subsidies and stimulus and credits and loopholes and all the other politically inserted stuff...we could easily have a flat rate.

And if we wanted real accountability, we would tie the flat rate to how much the government spent the year before.

As it is, the tax rates everyone talks about are meaningless. My Fantasy Tax Rate was multiple times higher than my actual tax rate that I mentioned above was. And I have no fancy tax situations that are special to me or anything else. Just a middle class married man with a house and a couple of kids.

So I bet most of the demographic that the Democrats talk to about Romney's tax rate being so terribly low actually have a much lower, if not negative, actual tax rate.

 

You do understand marginal rates don't you?

 

Here are the effective rates I found for 2009.

So, if you made under $200K, you should still feel good if you are a Democrat. Romney probably paid a higher rate (or much higher rate) than you did. If you made over $200K...who cares...you are probably a Republican by now anyway you 2%'er.

Income Tax Summary Statistics for 2009
Adjusted Gross Income Average Tax Rate
All returns 11.00%
$1 - $5,000 0.10%
$5,000 - $10,000 0.40%
$10,000 - $15,000 1.00%
$15,000 - $20,000 1.00%
$20,000 - $25,000 2.00%
$25,000 - $30,000 3.00%
$30,000 - $40,000 4.00%
$40,000 - $50,000 5.00%
$50,000 - $75,000 7.00%
$75,000 - $100,000 8.00%
$100,000 - $200,000 12.00%

 

Wow! This is my new definition for someone that is a tool of the wealthy. Lackey, lapdog, bootlick, brownnoser, doormat, flunky, sycophant, minion, they all work.

You Righties keep disingenuously bringing this back to a question of what is legal. Nobody argues the legality just the fairness of the elite paying little or no taxes while those of us that do not have the means or privilege to game the system to our advantage are supposed to remain silent because the elite haven’t broken any laws....Laws that corruption and greed brought to the situation in the first place. I guess my opinion of your opinion is that you can go screw yourself and stop trying to screw the rest of with your innate stupidity.

 

So, Romney pays waaayyyy more in taxes than you do, on both a percentage basis & in terms of dollars, yet you want to criticize him for not paying enough?

 

Get your own account in the Caymans. Or Switzerland. Or the BVI like Ted Kennedy. It's the smart thing to do. But, please don't criticize those who are smarter than you when it comes to taxes. I thought you were better than that. Oh, wait. No I didn't.

 

This is interesting. How is the "average" tax rate arrived at? What figures go into calculating the "average tax rate"? And the chart stops at $200,000. According to the Washington Post,

So if we're talking about Romney, he doesn't seem to fit here. In fact with a $200,000 cut off a whole lot of people don't fit here. Are we looking at households or individuals? Is this for people filing jointly or singly? But mostly I'm interested in how the red numbers were calculated. Can you help me out?

 

Here's the whole table:
http://taxfoundation.org/blog/its-not-math-its-data

The table includes all tax returns. Their source is an IRS table linked on that page.

I clipped the table because $200k is where I think Obama's fantasy definition of middle class ends in his tax plans. In other words, it is the demographic he is targeting with his talks of Romney's tax rates. Above 200k, I believe the thinking is that you are rich and should be paying more no matter what your rate is now.

And, as an aside, my effective tax rate averages about 25% lower than the average that the table shows for my AGI group. Another nail in the coffin in my bid for POTUS.

As another aside, a cut off of 200K doesn't leave out as many people as you seem to think. Less than 3% make more than 200k in this country if I am not mistaken.