Democrats Pounce On Romney’s Tax Return, They accuse the GOP candidate of manipulating his income calculations. Democrats: Political slant marks Romney tax return, Democrats quickly leaped on the documents, saying Romney had claimed fewer deductions than he was entitled to just to keep his rate at such a level. Romney told reporters in August he had never paid below 13 percent in taxes in any given year over the past 20. Had he taken the full charitable deduction, it would have pushed his tax liability below 13 percent.
“The information released today reveals that Mitt Romney manipulated one of the only two years of tax returns he’s seen fit to show the American people – and then only to ‘conform’ with his public statements. That raises the question: What else in those returns has Romney manipulated?” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
Stephanie Cutter, deputy campaign manager for President Barack Obama, said the release of Romney’s 2011 tax returns “confirms what we already knew – that people like Mitt Romney pay a lower tax rate than many middle-class families because of a set of complex loopholes and tax shelters only available to those at the top. Yet, Mitt Romney still wants to give multimillionaires an additional $250,000 tax cut at the expense of middle-class taxpayers who will see their taxes go up.”
Romney, one of the wealthiest candidates ever to seek the presidency, paid taxes at a rate lower than taxpayers whose income was mostly from wages, which can be taxed at higher rates.
Romney’s taxes have emerged as a key issue during the 2012 presidential race. He released his 2010 returns in January, but he continues to decline to disclose returns from previous years – including those while he worked at Bain Capital, the private equity firm he co-founded.
The Obama campaign and other Democrats have pushed for fuller disclosures, reminding the Republican candidate that his father, George Romney, released a dozen years of returns when he ran for president.
Overall, the Romneys’ main tax return and separate forms for blind trusts totaled more than 800 pages. The blind-trust income came from hedge funds and other complex investment vehicles. The couple also reported $3.5 million in income “from sources outside the United States,” citing “various countries.” Their forms included filings on holdings in Switzerland, Ireland, Germany and the Cayman Islands.
The Obama campaign accused Romney anew of profiting from millions invested overseas and “loopholes and tax shelters only available to those at the top.”
Apparently hoping to resolve basic questions voters might have, the Romney campaign released a letter from his accountants saying that in the 20 years prior to 2010 the Romneys paid an average annual effective rate of 20.2 percent, never lower than 13.66 percent. On average, middle-income families – those making from $50,000 to $75,000 a year – pay 12.8 percent of their income in federal taxes, according to Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation. But many pay a higher rate.
The former Massachusetts governor, whose wealth is estimated as high as $250 million, is aggressively competing with Obama for the support of middle-class voters.
Obama’s own tax return for last year showed that he and his wife, Michelle, paid $162,074 in federal taxes on $789,674 in adjusted gross income, an effective tax rate of 20.5 percent. Their income plunged from $1.7 million in 2010, with declining sales of the president’s books. In 2009, the Obamas reported income of $5.5 million, fueled by the best-selling books.
The Romneys’ tax bill could have been lower. They gave $2.6 million in cash to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the documents show. They gave just over $2 million in non-cash charitable contributions – including donations of stock holdings in Domino’s Pizza, Dunkin Donuts and Warner Chilcott – to a family trust.
They could have claimed more in deductions, said Brad Malt, the trustee of Romney’s blind trust, but the couple “limited their deductions of charitable contributions to conform to the governor’s statement in August, based on the January estimate of income, that he paid at least 13 percent in income taxes in each of the last 10 years.”
Romney seemed to be painted into a corner by that statement, which came in reaction to Senate Democratic leader Reid’s claim to have heard that the Republican had paid no taxes in some years.
Title: Democrats Pounce On Romney’s Tax Return
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