Romney: I am unqualified to be President
Muir: So from what you have released and from what we have seen we know that there was one year when you paid about 13.9% tax rate. Can we clear this up by asking a simple yes or no question? Was there ever any year when you paid lower than 13.9%?
Romney: I havent calculated that. Im happy to go back and look but my view is Ive paid all the taxes required by law. From time to time Ive been audited as happens I think to other citizens as well and the accounting firm which prepares my taxes has done a very thorough and complete job pay(ing) taxes as legally due. I dont pay more than are legally due and frankly
if I had paid more than are legally due I dont think Id be qualified to become president. Id think people would want me to follow the law and pay only what the tax code requires.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/transcript-david-muir-interview-mitt-romney/story?id=16881787&page=2
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.
Read more:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/21/mitt-romney-tax-return_n_1904573.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003