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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMr. Romney's 'Garbage' (WaPost Editorial)
FORMER GOVERNOR Mitt Romney, the presumed Republican nominee for president, promises to lower everyones income tax rate without reducing revenue. This sounds terrific. Why didnt we think of it sooner?
Mr. Romney says that he can achieve this seemingly magical result by broadening the base for income tax collection. This, too, sounds great. In principle, everyone favors broadening the base, also known as closing loopholes. But everyone favors closing someone elses loopholes: those of oil companies, say, or of plutocrats who park their money in the Cayman Islands.
His tax cut promises dont add up . . .
Recently the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, a joint venture of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, showed that Mr. Romneys plan would by necessity help the rich and hurt the middle class. In an interview with Fortune magazine last week, Mr. Romney took strong issue with this conclusion. They made garbage assumptions and they reached a garbage conclusion, he said. Contrary to the centers assumption, he said, he would not take away middle-class tax breaks for homeownership, charitable giving and health care.
Trimming those breaks for the wealthy, as Mr. Romney implies he would do, is a good idea. President Obama has been proposing to do so, by capping total deductions allowed in top brackets, through most of his term, and the idea has gone nowhere in Congress. But heres the catch demonstrated by the center (and confirmed in an update last week, responding to criticisms from some conservative economists): Even if you take away every dollar of tax breaks the wealthy enjoy, you wont get as much back as Mr. Romney proposes to give in tax cuts. So you would either have to go after the middle class or abandon the promise of revenue neutrality.
If these are garbage assumptions, why doesnt Mr. Romney let us in on his own? If he can be specific about how much he would lower the tax rate, why not be as specific about how he would pay for that?
read: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mr-romneys-garbage/2012/08/18/d109ac74-e883-11e1-8487-64e4b2a79ba8_print.html