Special interest
Mitt Romney said he has paid all of the taxes he is legally obligated to and his 13.9 percent rate in 2010 is simply a result of following those rules. But as Jon Stewart pointed out recently - check out the Indecision 2012: I Know What You Did Last Quarter clip - one of the primary reasons Romney continues to pay that low interest rate is because of a tax loophole called carried interest, which allows Romney and others to pay a 15 percent rate on income because it is treated like long-term capital gains.
In 2007, a bipartisan group in Congress pushed to get rid of that loophole. And the House passed a law to repeal that loophole multiple times in recent years, but it was not seconded by the Senate. Who were some of the primary lobbyists arguing to keep the loophole in place? Bain Capital and Romney himself. It costs the U.S. Treasury billions of dollars a year.
I have no problem with capitalism. But I do have a problem with loopholes like that.
Quick question: Last night President Obama made the case for essentially a minimum tax for those earning at least one million dollars a year. The floor would be a 30 percent rate - which is lower than the current top income tax rate of 35 percent or the 39.6 percent it would be if the Bush tax cuts expire in January. (Obama and Newt Gingrich pay about 31 percent of their income in taxes every year.) Does a minimum tax for the richest Americans make sense to you?
