Now that Mitt Rommney's Gaffe-a-thlon World Tour is winding down, there are not-so-quiet whispers coming from Harry Reid that Romney may have paid no taxes for a decade.
It seems Mitt is already pre-emptively defending himself against the question that has not been asked. Is it true you paid no taxes for almost a decade?
In an interview with ABCs David Muir during the Israel leg of the trip, Romney said this in response to whether he has paid less than the 13.9% rate he paid on the one year of returns he has revealed.
Romney: I haven't calculated that. I'm happy to go back and look but my view is I've paid all the taxes required by law. From time to time I've been audited as happens I think to other citizens as well and the accounting firm which prepares y taxes has done a very thorough and complete job pay taxes as legally due. 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. I'd think people would want me to follow the law and pay only what the tax code requires.
I'm not fit for office!
I have many reasons that would disqualify Mitt for the Presidency, and 'overpaying' his taxes would probably not crack the top thousand. Paul Waldman of The American Prospect thinks Romney is telling us we're suckers if we paid more taxes than we had to.
It was a strange thing to say, but quite revealing—far more so than other comments of Romney's that got much more attention. Apparently, Romney feels that if you don't hire lawyers to help you take advantage of every hidden provision and loophole that might lower your tax bill, you're some kind of contemptible sucker unworthy of high office.
It says a lot about who Romney thinks should be holding political office. And at least according to
Forbes magazine, the perception that anyone who doesn't structure their taxes to pay as little as possible is a chump is pervasive in 'certain' circles.
My take on this after decades of writing about tax planning, legitimate tax shelters, over-the-line tax shelters and out and out tax cheating, is this: The attitude in some sophisticated circles that folks are chumps (or even negligent) if they don’t structure their affairs to exploit every possible provision of the tax code in ways Congress intended (and didn’t) creates a climate that allows abusive tax shelters to flourish and undermines the functioning of the tax code (which, granted, is plenty dysfunctional on its own.)
So, what is Mitt Romney saying when he decides to say, people would think he was not qualified to be President if he overpaid on his taxes? For one, he is certainly addressing that circle of people who would find such behavior a disqualification for office, i,e, people who do the same thing. As Waldman further
says, this is thinking from his days in private equity where such behavior is admired and rewarded.
Not only that, both times he has said this he projects the belief onto other people as well. "I don't think you want someone" the first time, "I'd think people would want me" this time. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say this has its roots in Romney's time in the private equity world. [If he hadn't done it] you might think he had failed you, since the only goal in the endeavor is to make as much money as possible and keep the government's hands off it.
But this can only be addressing a very small slice of the population, right around 1 percent, I would guess. People whose votes Romney undoubtedly has already locked up.
So why else could Romney be saying such an odd thing?
I'd think people would want me to follow the law and pay only what the tax code requires.
It seems like a pre-emptive defense to the question, or even the revelation, that he did not pay any taxes at all for a decade. It's as if someone already posed the question - Mitt Romney, is it true you paid no taxes for a decade? What else could he say, other than to project onto other people that they wouldn't want him to pay a 'penny more' than what was legally required. Shouldn't he be saying 'not a penny less'? This extremely odd verbal construction makes a lot more sense when it is preceeded with the question about not having paid any taxes at all.
Furthermore, one has to believe the return he chose to reveal has to be the one that shows him in the best possible light. If he had paid any higher rate in other years, surely he would have chosen that one to share. So all others are less than 13.9%. Maybe even zero.
His claim of paying a 'substantial amount' of taxes doesn't even preclude the possibility of having paid no taxes for a decade. Neither does having been audited. That one year's tax bill is no doubt 'substantial' in his mind. To this miser, anything over a nickel that he has to give away to the government is 'substantial'.
So his peculiar remark about us not wanting him to pay more taxes than is required makes a lot more sense in the context of defending himself against having paid no taxes, which makes that possibility a lot more likely. It seems that Harry Reid knows something, and so does the Obama campaign when they ask, doesn't it make you wonder?
So no, Willard, paying your fair share is not what disqualifies you from being the President. Finding arcane ways to avoid paying anything at all an income of millions of dollars, and seeking that office to ensure you can continue doing so, does.