Front runner, Mitt Romney, for the politically ignorant
You’ve heard about him… You’ve seen his salt and pepper hairdo… But who is he?
We all want to get in on the heated conversations and seem like we are able to discern the presidential candidates. We want to feel like we are knowledgeable of those who will potentially run our country.
As I am watching all of these specials on Mitt Romney, and how he’s “the man to beat,” I am not enough aware of what he represents. I figured I wasn’t the only one, so I decided to look into it myself from a variety of sources.
The Huffington Post, which, to my understanding, is a liberal magazine. I am aware of this. Nonetheless, they recently posted an article called, “Mitt Romney Plan Raises Taxes On Poor Families, Helps Millionaires: Study”
WASHINGTON — Republican Mitt Romney’s tax plan would increase taxes on low-income families while cutting taxes for the middle-class and the rich, according to an independent study released Thursday.
On average, households making less than $20,000 would see their taxes increase by more than 60 percent, said the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research group that studied the Romney plan.
Households making between $50,000 and $75,000 would get small tax cuts, averaging 2.2 percent, or about $250, the study said. People making more than $1 million would get tax cuts averaging 15 percent, or about $146,000.
The title itself could make one assume that this is an unfair and pro “rich people” plan. So, I decided to look elsewhere.
According to Romney’s website:
Mitt Romney believes in the conservative principle that Americans, to the maximum extent possible, should be able to keep the money they earn. Unfortunately, as Benjamin Franklin wrote, there are only two things that are unavoidable: death and taxes. We need taxes to pay for the operations of government. But they should be collected by a system that is simple and fair, and that causes the least possible disruption to the productive economy.
Maintain current tax rates on personal income
Maintain current tax rates on interest, dividends, and capital gains
Eliminate taxes for taxpayers with AGI below $200,000 on interest, dividends, and capital gains
Eliminate the death tax
Pursue a conservative overhaul of the tax system over the long term that includes lower, flatter rates on a broader base
The Tax Policy Center reveals Romney’s Tax Plan which can also be seen in the PDF version.
Compared to current rates, Romney’s plan would cost a family in the bottom 20 percent $157 and save a family in the top 1 percent $82,000, according to the Washington Post.
For the bottom 80% of the income distribution, federal tax rates would drop between 0.6% and 3.4%. For the top 20%, they’d drop 5.9%; for the top 1%, they’d drop 8.6%. That means the regular-joe taxpayer at the middle of the distribution gets a cut of about $1,400, while a taxpayer in the top 1% gets a cut of $171,000. (Economist)
HOWEVER, Romney’s “poor people” tax hikes are less than those of his opponents EXCEPT for Obama:
All in all, Gingrich is the biggest offender of the high income tax cuts, lowering them by 24 percentage points! Obama is the only one who represents the complete opposite.
