Romney Releases Tax Returns

[Alerik the Fortunate]

I know, I know, it's Townhall.com, but they link to his official site and several others, claiming that the Romneys paid not only at least average taxes, but donated 30% of their income to charity. I haven't reviewed the details yet, but here's the main part of the article:

It's official: The Romney campaign possesses a wicked sense of humor and an enviable degree of patience. After months of caterwauling, breathless innuendo and baseless slander, the Democrats and their media allies are being treated to a Friday feast of piping hot crow. The Romney campaign has released a detailed report of the the candidate's 2011 tax returns, as well as an extensive summary of the Romneys' taxes over the last two decades, prepared by analysts at PricewaterhouseCoopers. What do these documents contain? Brad Malt, the Romney family's trustee, summarizes the 2011 data:


- In 2011, the Romneys paid $1,935,708 in taxes on $13,696,951 in mostly investment income.

- The Romneys’ effective tax rate for 2011 was 14.1%.

-The Romneys donated $4,020,772 to charity in 2011, amounting to nearly 30% of their income.

-The Romneys claimed a deduction for $2.25 million of those charitable contributions. The Romneys’ generous charitable donations in 2011 would have significantly reduced their tax obligation for the year. The Romneys thus limited their deduction of charitable contributions to conform to the Governor's statement in August, based upon the January estimate of income, that he paid at least 13% in income taxes in each of the last 10 years.


In short, and as Kevin noted, Romney forked over nearly $2 million to Uncle Sam last year and donated more than $4 million to charity. He overpaid his taxes by limiting the charitable deductions he chose to claim, which could have driven his obligations to government even lower. Liberals are now actually complaining that Romney intentionally paid *too much* in taxes to boost his own effective rate, due to his prodigious philanthropic giving. This line of criticism is downright hilarious. It's okay to point and laugh. And what about the last 20 years?


- In each year during the entire 20-year period, the Romneys owed both state and federal income taxes.

-Over the entire 20-year period, the average annual effective federal tax rate was 20.20%.

-Over the entire 20-year period, the lowest annual effective federal personal tax rate was 13.66%.

-Over the entire 20-year period, the Romneys gave to charity an average of 13.45% of their adjusted gross income.

-Over the entire 20-year period, the total federal and state taxes owed plus the total charitable donations deducted represented 38.49% of total AGI.

-During the 20-year period covered by the PWC letter, Gov. and Mrs. Romney paid 100 percent of the taxes that they owed.


Let's unpack these numbers. The Romneys owed and paid state and federal income taxes every single year stretching back to at least 1990. Harry Reid's imaginary friend is unavailable for comment. Their effective tax rate, on average, was over 20 pecent (nearly double the average effective rate in America, according to the non-partisan Tax Foundation). Does this qualify as a "fair share"? In the last two decades, the Romney's donated 13.45 percent of their adjusted gross income to charity. This totally dwarfs the long-term giving of the Obamas and the Bidens, in case anyone in the class warfare camp is keeping score. But remember, Mitt Romney is callously dismissive and uncaring toward poor people and the '47 percent.' Overall, the Romney family paid every cent they owed -- and more -- forking over nearly 40 percent of their income to either the government or charitable organizations, including their church. I've got to hand it to the Romney campaign: They played a long game here, and did so masterfully. One of the most obnoxious and relentless arrows in Democrats' attack quiver has been the tax returns issue. See how greedy and secretive Romney is? Even his own father released 12 years of returns! He's probably a tax cheat! That's all gone now, and the whiners look petty, small, and stupid. And Mitt Romney looks like the remarkably generous, law-abiding, productive member of society that he is. Bravo.

Criticisms, considerations, projections on how this will affect the election?

[Block]

Won't mean a thing. He released one year, not 5 or 10 or 12 like his father did.

[Mr Bean]

It means he spent 30% of his income on his religion which he never talks about in Public and payed 14% of his income to the government. He still has yet to release any years when he was doing something other than running as President.

And it's been noted that once again the Statement of Foreign holdings was not included. (Or it was not as of an hour ago) so we know he keeps his money over-seas but how much and for what purposes we don't officially know.

Either was as was already joked about elsewhere. It's pretty bad when the News Cycle is so bad you release your tax returns so we can go back to that News Cycle again.

[Aaron MkII]

Does it say who the charities are?

[Alerik the Fortunate]

I couldn't find anything, but I'm assuming the Mormon church or affiliated groups for the most part.

[Aaron MkII]

That's what I figure as well.

[Sriad]

Criticisms, considerations, projections on how this will affect the election?

I don't think it will effect anything except maybe Harry Reid's reelection campaign. Romney missed the boat on this one by weeks and Townhall is trying to make it look like a tactical masterstroke when it's closer to a medical stroke. Tax returns are last month's scandal, what people care about this week is Smirk-gate and the 47% of America that suckles at the government teat.

Anyway, look forward to a boatload of spin from everyone. Some choice selections from the linked article:

The Romney campaign has released a detailed report of the the candidate's 2011 tax returns, as well as an extensive summary of the Romneys' taxes over the last two decades, prepared by analysts at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

I'm gonna put on my tinfoil hat for a minute here. Romney has still only released two (arguably 1.5) years' returns. The rest are summaries--which are much more legal to distort or lie about--and the primary document for those claims is this letter from PricewaterhouseCoopers: http://www.mittromney.com/disclosure/letter-from-pwc

I have no doubt the numbers there are technically accurate I also have no doubt that they're also technically dishonest. For example they don't include the $100,000,000 in Romney's IRA, contributed at a rate of $60,000 per year.

Liberals are now actually complaining that Romney intentionally paid *too much* in taxes to boost his own effective rate, due to his prodigious philanthropic giving.

Without his 2011 overpayment his tax rate would have been below 13%, invalidating his claims of never paying less than that. Because they were unclaimed he can still claim those givings against his tax liability for 2012.

Their effective tax rate, on average, was over 20 pecent (nearly double the average effective rate in America, according to the non-partisan Tax Foundation).

From Wikipedia:

Tax Foundation research is generally critical of tax increases,[8][9][10][11] high business taxes,[12] so-called "sin" taxes,[13] tax preferences for the housing industry,[14] and use of the tax code for "picking winners and losers".[15][16] However, they are against reducing $47 billion in tax credits for the oil industry, and against taxes on growing fossil-fuel carbon emissions.[citation needed] They have spoken favorably of efforts to balance the federal budget with tax reform and significant spending cuts, such as the Bowles-Simpson plan,[17] the Ryan Plan,[18] and the Wyden-Coats plan.[19]
The Tax Foundation has received funding from ExxonMobil and from conservative political groups such as the Koch Family Foundations, the Earhart Foundation,[20] and Citizens for a Sound Economy.

Yea. Endorsing the Ryan plan from funding by Koch and Exxon is the first thing that springs to mind when I hear "nonpartisan". If that 20% claim holds water he paid the "effective rate" of someone in the $100,000-$200,000 income bracket.

My blatantly partisan analysis assuming the numbers are strictly accurate: Romney has shown himself to NOT be a tax-dodging piece of shit, but without using hard primary documentation. There's nothing here to be proud of, only enough to make Reid's claims look bad, and my tinfoil hat wearing side is wondering very loudly why it took so long to come out with this instead of making all the lefties look bad by releasing them right away.

[Sriad]

Somebody who shall remain nameless clicked the submit button twice.

To do something useful with this space I'll reiterate the whole problem: "I don't want to see the taxes he paid when he knew he was running for President. I want to see the taxes he paid when he thought nobody was looking." With real legal documents please.

[weemadando]

Also, well done for donating 30% of your income to charity. Your annual take home after your splendidly managed tax liabilities, generosity and everything else is still close to an order of magnitude more than my family will see in it's lifetime.

[jcow79]

So Romney purposely paid more in taxes than was legally required? There you have it, he admits he's not qualified to be president. He's been quoted as saying if he paid more than was legally required, he wouldn't be qualified to be president.

[Blayne]

I would like to point out this interesting Romney quote:

I pay all the taxes that are legally required and not a dollar more. I don't think you want someone as the candidate for president who pays more taxes than he owes.

Romney believes if you pay more taxes than you should, you are not qualified to be President. I think the article in the OP forgot something... ;)

[D.Turtle]

Split the discussion about selfish charity donations to the SLAM forum: Selfishness in Charity Donations.

[Alerik the Fortunate]

From talk on this elsewhere, it seems Romney has the power to set his taxes at an almost arbitrary level and chose something that would be politically beneficial, and that is what people are really upset about, that members of his class have that privilege.