Romney’s New Tax Plan Gives The Richest 0.1 Percent A $264,000 Tax Cut
Mitt Romney this week unveiled a new tax plan that includes a 20 percent reduction in all marginal income tax rates. Previously, Romney had said that hes not concerned about the very rich and is proposing no tax cuts for the rich. But during this weeks GOP primary debate, he reneged on that position, saying, number one, I said that were going to cut taxes on everyone across the country by 20 percent, including the top 1 percent.
Romneys new tax cut may reduce all tax rates by the same amount, but it gives most of its benefits to the already wealthy. The Tax Policy Center had modeled a 20 percent reduction in all income tax rates, and as this table shows,
nearly half the benefit of such a cut would go to the richest 5 percent of Americans, with more than 25 percent of the benefit going to the richest 1 percent, compared with current policy.
This analysis actually understates how much of the benefit would go to the wealthy under Romneys plan, because the TPC included in its model a 20 percent reduction in the Alternative Minimum Tax, whereas Romney would abolish the AMT completely. Meanwhile, Romneys cuts would cost $10.7 trillion over ten years, four times the cost of the Bush tax cuts.
Romney insists that his tax cut will be deficit neutral, because of unspecified deductions and credits that he is going to eliminate. But as Prof. James Kwak noted, the math for Romney simply doesnt add up.
So all hes doing is promising a massive tax cut for the rich now, with some hand-waving about how hed pay for it later.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/02/24/431844/romney-tax-cut-half-benefits-rich/
Mitt Romney's Tax Plan Is a Mathematical Disaster
Poor Mitt Romney. First it turned out that he couldn't even put away Rick Santorum -- Rick Santorum! -- by late February. Now it turns out he can't do arithmetic.