Romney "Paid more than he had to" Flip Flop #10,341

[Laura PourMeADrink]

http://www.buzzfeed.com/zekejmiller/romney-campaign-says-he-paid-more-taxes-than-he-ha

Romney Campaign Says He Paid More Taxes Than He Had To

Under-reported his 2011 charitable giving to keep his tax rate above 13 percent. He'd earlier said that paying more taxes than you have to is disqualifying, but this is a “unique” situation.

Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney talks to an aide on his campaign plane while en-route to Las Vegas, Nevada September 21, 2012. Image by Brian Snyder / Reuters
Posted Sep 21, 2012 2:10pm EDT

Mitt Romney's campaign announced Friday that they will release the Republican nominee's 2011 tax returns this afternoon at 3 p.m., which will reveal the candidate paid a marginal rate of 14.1 percent.

Romney's blind trust trustee, R. Bradford Malt, said Romney artificially kept his marginal rate above 13 percent — the rate below which he says he has never paid — by not reporting nearly half his charitable giving.

The move seemed to contradict Romney's earlier position on the subject of tax payments.

"I don’t think you want someone as the candidate for president who pays more taxes than he owes," he said in a january debate in Tampa, Fla.

An email to the Romney campaign account dedicated to responding to questions about tax returns, [email protected], produced this response:

He has been clear that no American need pay more than he or she owes under the law. At the same time, he was in the unique position of having made a commitment to the public that his tax rate would be above 13%. In order to be consistent with that statement, the Romneys limited their deduction of charitable contributions.

Romney had released his 2010 tax return, and has been under pressure from Democrats to release many more years.
Romney's campaign obtained a letter from his tax preparer, PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP, to attest to his tax rate over the past two decades, which the campaign hopes will put an end to claims he never paid taxes for a decade.

According to the letter from the firm, Romney's average annual effective federal tax rate from 1990-2009 was 20.20 percent, with the lowest rate being 13.66 percent.

The letter also states that the Romneys gave to charity an average of 13.45 percent of their adjusted gross income over that period. In 2011 they donated nearly 30 percent of their income to charity.

[unblock]

1. lol! he didn't report the other half because he only just made them up.

this is really silly and politically inept.

if he really wanted to do this, he would have reported all his charitable donations, then made an additional *voluntary contribution* to the united states treasury. that would give credibility to the existence of the charitable donations, and also make him look like an honest good guy by explicitly overpaying his taxes.

doing it this way comes off much more like spin and rationalizations.


in any event, thanks mitt, for helping to keep this issue alive!

[Laura PourMeADrink]

2. Love your last line !! It is so true. Although voluntary contribution to treasury would

have been so obviously against his nature, it would have reaked of bullshit.

I knew they would funny it up. But, I thought they'd go higher. I underestimated his stubborn greed.

But, I never in a million years thought they would tell us they paid more than they had to.

[nanabugg]

3. Only after he wanted his returns to look better on the rate side. nt

[JDPriestly]

4. What rate would he have paid had he declared all of his charitable donations?

[Laura PourMeADrink]

7. zero. Maybe this is just a ploy to sound like Jesus....make us think he cares about

the poor and lame.

[bongbong]

5. I can't believe it!

He has ONLY 10,341 flip-flops?

[spanone]

6. why on god's green earth would i take romney's word on his taxes? show them willard. show them now.