Romney Pays Smaller Tax Rate Than The Middle Class Does

For months now Mitt Romney, the leading Republican presidential candidate, has refused to release his tax forms to the media. he has done this in spite of the fact that President Obama and all of Romney's opponents have either released their tax forms or indicated their willingness to do so. It has become obvious by now that this has nothing to do with privacy (since a presidential candidate has no privacy), but only because Romney knows the public won't understand how little he pays in taxes compared to the general public (who actually have to work for their income).

It has reached the point now where even the other Republican candidates know this is an indefensible weak point for the Romney campaign, and in the last debate they attacked Romney for his failure to make his tax forms public. And he's starting to crack. He now says he might release his tax forms next April (after he hopes he has the nomination wrapped up). He also admitted yesterday to a direct question that his tax rate is around 15%. He said:

What’s the effective rate I’ve been paying? It’s probably closer to the 15 percent rate than anything, because my last ten years, I’ve, my income comes overwhelmingly from investments made in the past, rather than ordinary income, rather than earned annual income.

Fifteen percent? That's a smaller percentage than a family making about $75,000 a year pays (and Romney makes several million a year). But that's not unusual. Most of the super-rich like Romney pay only about a 15% tax rate, because they make their money off investments rather than having to work for it. Romney pays about the same rate as billionaire Warren Buffett. But there's a big difference between the two men.

While Buffett thinks the rich should pay a higher tax rate, Romney thinks they should pay even less. His tax plan would give the rich more tax cuts, and those cuts would be even larger than the ones Bush initiated for the rich. And while giving the rich huge tax cuts, the Romney plan would actually raise taxes for 22 million people (people who have to work for their income, not rich people). Romney is not only a member of the 1% class, but thinks they shouldn't have to pay as much of their income in taxes as working people.

The charts below (from the excellent blog Under The Mountain Bunker) illustrates the unfairness of Romney's tax plan -- and how much he favors the 1% over working Americans: