Romney tax plan 'conceptually' close to Simpson-Bowles? No way!

Romney tax plan avoids several key Simpson-Bowles proposals that would raise taxes overall and reduce the deficit. Instead, Romney tax plan relies solely on mostly unspecified spending cuts to trim deficit.

In the recent contretemps over Mitt Romney’s tax plan, some Romney partisans have asserted that the Massachusetts governor’s revenue plank mimics the tax elements of the deficit reduction plan proposed in 2010 by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, the chairs of President Obama’s deficit fiscal commission.


This claim is absurd. These two proposals could hardly be more different.

True, both propose a significant across-the-board rate cut on ordinary income. But after that, their tax plans have about as much in common as Infected Mushroom and the New York Philharmonic. True, they both play music, but after that….

The Bowles-Simpson tax reform was fundamentally a trillion-dollar tax increase designed to help cut the deficit, while Romney flatly opposes any deficit-reducing tax hike. Bowles and Simpson would have raised taxes on capital gains and dividends, Romney would cut them. Bowles and Simpson included very specific proposals for eliminating popular tax preferences. Romney is largely silent on how he’d broaden the tax base to pay for his rate cuts.

But none of those inconvenient facts slow those who would caricature Bowles-Simpson to make a political point. Here, for instance, is the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page on the matter:

more: http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Tax-VOX/2012/0810/Romney-tax-plan-conceptually-close-to-Simpson-Bowles-No-way