The Simple and Impossible Algebra of Mitt Romney's Tax Plan

It's easy to get into the weeds too much and lose people's attention on this subject, so it helps to be as simple as possible.

Let's take his statements regarding who benefits from his tax plan. He says middle class families, which he has defined as anyone up to $250,000 a year in income, will see taxes go down. He also says that small business owners will see their taxes go down. He also says that no one will see higher taxes, which he has reinforced with criticizing President Obama for saying that he will raise taxes on those making $250,000+. Also, very importantly, he has said that this doesn't add a single dollar to the deficit.

So, let's define the algebra here.

M = Middle Class Taxpayers' Burdens
S = Small Business Owners' Burdens
X = Mystery People's Burdens

Mitt Romney's equation works out the following:

-M + -S + X = 0

The difficulty here is that he has already said that no one will see higher taxes, so X, by definition, also equals 0. As such, the simplified version of Mitt Romney's tax plan:

-M + -S = 0

Assuming that M and S are nonzero positive numbers, this is absolutely impossible.

Now, let's even give him the possibility of backing out of the "no one will see higher taxes" constraint, then it becomes a question of who those people are and to what extent they will see higher taxes.

This is the simple truth of his plan and why it's bullshit.