I Don’t Care What Tax Rate The Presidential Candidates Pay And Neither Should You
Apparently, Mitt Romney pays “about 15% in taxes” and Newt Gingrich pays around 32%. Quelle Horreur! Apparently, this is big, important news on the campaign trail. Said Newt Gingrich (to paraphrase), “I am a superior candidate to you, Mitt Romney, because you utilized more completely legal and above-board tax planning strategies than I did last year.” Color me impressed!
Why Do People Care?
Newt is right, after all. Not intentionally paying more taxes than you legally owe is both immoral and stupid. All moral people, both rich and poor, always pay more taxes than they legally owe. Have you ever heard of anybody ever going to any amount of effort to claim all the credits and deductions to which they were entitled? Me neither. It’s unheard of because everybody knows the only ethical course of action is to overpay your taxes.
I mean, it’s much worse than that ethics violation Newt was reprimanded for, becoming the first Speaker of the House to ever be disciplined for ethics violations. Besides, Newt paid $300,000 in fines for that little issue. All’s well that ends well, right? The fact that Mitt Romney didn’t cheat on his taxes in the past gives we the people a lot of insight into how horrible of a president he will be. What a slimeball! Newt’s ethics violations, however, are completely irrelevant. Once an abuser of power, always an abuser of power? Please. That’s racist talk! Romney legally paid all the taxes he was required to pay and not a penny more! That bastard!
People Don’t Really Care, Which Brings Me To My Point…
In case you couldn’t tell, I was being sarcastic above (and yes, I have to explicitly state that because I’ll get angry email otherwise). I don’t care what either candidate has paid in taxes, so long as they did so legally. And despite all the vitriol, neither does anybody else. Newt’s supporters (and Obama’s by extension: just wait and see) don’t care that Romney only paid 15% in federal taxes. What they care about is that it gives them an opportunity to take a jab at him in order to support their own side. Some of them have probably even managed to convince themselves that Romney’s tax rate is a big deal. It’s not. How many truly independent voters have complained about Romney’s tax rate? None. It’s all partisan squabbling (and yes, it can be partisan squabbling even though it is within the Republican party.
Do You Care About Romney’s Tax Rate?
I’d like to issue a challenge to anybody who actually believes Romney’s tax rate is an important issue. Why do you think this? Is it because you believe it makes him greedy? If so, you’d better be able to produce your own tax return showing the extra amount of tax you paid to the IRS beyond what you legitimately owed.
Do you think it makes him a tax dodger? Again, present your own tax return showing excess tax paid before you make this argument.
Do you think it means he’s not paying your fair share?
What is it? Why does it matter to you? Give me specifics, not meaningless BS generalities like “oh, well it shows his lack of character and that he’s out of touch and that he hates puppies.”
Can anybody give me a legitimate reason why I or anybody else should care?
Oh well. I’m voting for Obama anyway.
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Wow… you’d actually get angry emails? Sad really…
It doesn’t matter what they paid as long as they paid. Romney made $21M off investments and paid $3M in taxes. That adds up perfectly, 15%. Case closed.
I find it interesting that Gingrich is attacking Romney using a Democrat attack line… “you pay more taxes than your secretary! Blah, blah, blah”
I also fund it funny that Gingrich was pouting over Romney stepping up his attack ads in response to Gingrich’s own ads. I hope Romney ends up smoking him in the primary.
All that said, my candidate… Huntsman blew it. He never connected w/ voters, especially the moderates. He never really got his message out there, and it was a damn good message and platform. Every comment about Huntsman from Democrats was along the lines of… “hey, why isn’t the GOP waking up to this guy? He could and would beat Obama.”
Oh well… Huntsman: 2016 (see what I did there?)
I think Romney is personifying the OWS’s 1%, and his tax situation gives the lie to the Republican mantra that the rich are by definition ‘job creators’ and so shouldn’t pay the same tax rates that us wage slaves do. I don’t see how he could argue that he’s using the income he’s not paying in taxes to create jobs. Even if he is, the cost per job would be an interesting number. It might just be that some Republican primary voters are getting the message, and that would be a good thing. For what it’s worth, I’m retired, with pension and SS income of about 70k and RMD’s of 30k, and my effective tax rate is 18%. And I’m voting for Obama anyway.
Margaret, the rich have never once argued that they DIRECTLY are taking all that money and PERSONALLY creating jobs. Nobody ever made that argument. The argument goes that, IN AGGREGATE, all that investable capital is deployed relatively efficiently in job-creating endeavors. It may happen directly or it may happen through intermediaries in the financial markets. Since money is fungible, it doesn’t make any difference where it comes from. This seems to be an extremely common and fundamental misunderstanding of how capital and business formation works.
Also, I’ve never heard a Republican argue that the rich shouldn’t pay the same tax rates as anybody else. Could you cite an example please?