Romney Taxes: Paid 38.5% Doubles Obama in Charitable giving

[_bcspace]

Heck, he even skipped an important deduction just for you.......

Mitt Romney's presidential campaign is releasing a brief summary of 20 years of tax returns on Friday, and his accountant says it will show he gave 13.45 percent of his adjusted gross income to charities.

That's nearly twice the rate of President Obama, who according to his tax returns from 2000 through 2011 donated just less than 7 percent of his adjusted gross income to charities.

Mr. Romney's campaign did not release his returns, but instead had his trustee, Brad Malt, write a blog post giving some details of returns from 1990 through 2009.

The campaign has released Mr. Romney's 2010 return and, later Friday, will release his 2011 return, which he filed with the IRS earlier in the day.

That return will show Mr. Romney and his wife Ann paid $1.9 million in taxes on income of $13.7 million, for a rate of 14.1 percent, Mr. Malt said. Most of that income is from investments, which are usually taxed at a lower rate than salary or wages.

Mr. Malt said the Romneys would have had an even lower tax burden if they'd claimed the full deduction for all of their charitable giving in 2011, but said they "limited their deduction of charitable contributions to conform to the governor's statement in August, based upon the January estimate of income, that he paid at least 13 percent in income taxes in each of the last 10 years."

When charitable contributions and federal and state taxes are combined, it amounted to 38.5 percent of the Romneys' income, the trustee said.

Mr. Malt said the Romneys have owed taxes in each of the years in question — which contradicts a charge Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, issued earlier this summer.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/inside-politics/2012/sep/21/romney-doubles-obamas-charitable-giving/

[_Quasimodo]

Mitt Romney's presidential campaign is releasing a brief summary of 20 years of tax returns on Friday, and his accountant says it will show he gave 13.45 percent of his adjusted gross income to charities.

That only counts if one considers tithing as charitable. I do not.

Of course, this return is the one prepared while he is running for office (PR?). The other ten would show a different story.

It's a moot point anyway. He's already lost.

Moving on, who do you see as the Republican nominee in the 2016 elections against Hillary? Do you think that the Republican party will still exists then as a single party or do you think it will have fractured into two separate groups?

[_bcspace]

Of course there was no need to release them in the first place, no matter how good they looked as is the case here. But I would certainly agree that the media and the Democrats got punk'd. Go Romney!

Perhaps Obama is just waiting for Romney to actually question his birth certificate so he can finally reveal his real and legitimate one.........

[_Quasimodo]

Of course there was no need to release them in the first place, no matter how good they looked as is the case here. But I would certainly agree that the media and the Democrats got punk'd. Go Romney!

Perhaps Obama is just waiting for Romney to actually question his birth certificate so he can finally reveal his real and legitimate one.........

There is a great need for Romney to release all his taxes for the last ten years. No chance of election if he does not. Little or no chance for his election even if he does.

Your comment about Obama's birth certificate shows that you still have a sense of humor despite all the bad news that's cascading down on your side lately. You have my admiration.

[_bcspace]

Sen. Harry Reid said nothing of his earlier claims that Mitt Romney had not paid taxes over a ten-year span in a Friday statement joining Democrats in responding to Romney's release of tax-related documents on Friday.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/09/21/reid-avoids-prior-claims-blasts-romneys-accounting-wizards/

you still have a sense of humor despite all the bad news

What bad news? You mean the stuff manufactured by the Left and sold as news instead of roughage?

[_Quasimodo]

What bad news? You mean the stuff manufactured by the Left and sold as news instead of roughage?

No, I mean all the bad news reported by left, right and independent sources. Even conservative pundits are distancing themselves from Mitt.

Tim Pawlenty just quit as Romney's campaign co-chairman. If he thought there was any way for Mitt to win he would have stayed for what would have been an assured job as a cabinet member or high level adviser in a Romney administration. After this last week his thoughts must have been "Damn, this isn't going to fly. I have to find a job".

[_Kevin Graham]

Heck, he even skipped an important deduction just for you......

Of course he did. He was trying to drive up his effective tax rate as much as possible because otherwise he knew it would make it difficult to win an election. In other words, he was doing this for his own benefit, not out of the kindness of his own heart. But the fact is he can amend his tax return for 2012 and get all that money back, which he will probably do after he loses.

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WASHINGTON -- Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney on Friday announced that he will not take all the charitable deductions to which he was entitled for his 2011 taxes, in order to keep his tax return from falling below a threshold that would falsify an earlier assertion that he'd never paid lower than a 13 percent tax rate.

"The Romneys’ generous charitable donations in 2011 would have significantly reduced their tax obligation for the year. The Romneys thus limited their deduction of charitable contributions to conform to the Governor's statement in August, based upon the January estimate of income, that he paid at least 13% in income taxes in each of the last 10 years," his trustee Brad Malt said in a note accompanying the return.

The choice to not take the deduction allowed Romney to inflate his tax rate to 14.1 percent. The difference between his charitable giving of more than $4 million and his claimed deductions of $2.25 million increased his tax bill by several hundred thousand dollars, as he paid taxes he didn't have to on nearly two million dollars.

Luckily for Romney, after the election he can recoup that money. If the American people reject him at the polls in November -- and even if they don't -- Romney would be fully within his legal rights to file an amended return, requiring the Treasury to cut him a substantial check.

"It's noble," said Boston College tax law professor Brian Galle of Romney's generous, if temporary, gift to the Treasury. "It also doesn't prevent him from taking that deduction in an amended return if he were to file it after the election."

Romney has asserted that he does not believe in paying more taxes than required.

"I don't pay more than are legally due and frankly if I had paid more than are legally due I don't think I'd be qualified to become president," Romney has previously said. "I'd think people would want me to follow the law and pay only what the tax code requires."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/2 ... 04573.html