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On taxes, Mitt Romney is long on promises and short on details.
The Republican presidential nominee pledges to “lower taxes on middle-income families,” without giving high earners another tax cut or adding to the U.S. budget deficit. He can do that, he says, by capping the value of tax breaks available to any individual taxpayer.
His tax plan, however, would upend financial planning for millions of middle-class households, denying them thousands of dollars in annual deductions. Earlier this week, after months of refusing to specify which tax breaks he would curtail, Romney said taxpayers might be able to take a total of no more than $17,000 in deductions each year.
That won’t bring in enough revenue to make up for almost $5 trillion the government will lose over 10 years once tax rates are reduced by 20 percent as Romney has proposed, according to economist William Gale of the Brookings Institution in Washington.
“It doesn’t come close to paying for the $5 trillion,” said Gale, who co-authored a study of Romney’s tax plan for the non-partisan Tax Policy Center in Washington.
At least 3.7 million U.S. taxpayers last year reported deductions of $25,000 or more. About 10 million others wrote off $15,000 to $25,000. Romney says their taxes wouldn’t go up, and in fact would decline, under his 20 percent across-the-board tax rate cut.
http://stream.wsj.com/story/campaign-2012-continuous-coverage/SS-2-9156/SS-2-39745/
The Republican presidential nominee pledges to “lower taxes on middle-income families,” without giving high earners another tax cut or adding to the U.S. budget deficit. He can do that, he says, by capping the value of tax breaks available to any individual taxpayer.
His tax plan, however, would upend financial planning for millions of middle-class households, denying them thousands of dollars in annual deductions. Earlier this week, after months of refusing to specify which tax breaks he would curtail, Romney said taxpayers might be able to take a total of no more than $17,000 in deductions each year.
That won’t bring in enough revenue to make up for almost $5 trillion the government will lose over 10 years once tax rates are reduced by 20 percent as Romney has proposed, according to economist William Gale of the Brookings Institution in Washington.
“It doesn’t come close to paying for the $5 trillion,” said Gale, who co-authored a study of Romney’s tax plan for the non-partisan Tax Policy Center in Washington.
At least 3.7 million U.S. taxpayers last year reported deductions of $25,000 or more. About 10 million others wrote off $15,000 to $25,000. Romney says their taxes wouldn’t go up, and in fact would decline, under his 20 percent across-the-board tax rate cut.
http://stream.wsj.com/story/campaign-2012-continuous-coverage/SS-2-9156/SS-2-39745/
Last edited by Dreamsglore on 10/8/2012, 11:06 pm; edited 1 time in total
