by Kenneth Thomas
Seriously, I could just re-post my February 27th post word for word tonight and it would be just as true as it was then. The Romney tax plan blows a $5 trillion hole in the budget via tax reductions and he still hasn’t told us anything about the tax breaks he would get rid of to pay for it, which he has to do because he calls it revenue neutral, as he did again in tonight’s debate.
Source: Angry Bear
by Kenneth Thomas
Source: Angry Bear
by Kenneth Thomas
Mitt Romney’s Unintentionally Hilarious Tax Return FAQ
Unless you’ve been in a coma, you have certainly heard about Mitt Romney’s release of his 2011 tax returns last Friday. You no doubt know that he and his wife did not claim all the charitable tax deductions they were due, so their tax rate would not go below 13% of adjusted gross income. If you read Bloomberg or a newspaper that picked up the Bloomberg story, you know that Rafalca, the Romneys’ dressage horse, has disappeared from their 2011 tax deductions. This, of course, raises the question of whether it was a legitimate deduction in 2010 (or earlier?). After all, being in the Olympics probably raised the mare’s value, making the profit motive necessary for an allowable business deduction more plausible. So why would Rafalca not be eligible to deduct in 2011 if she were eligible in 2010 and probably gained value?
But have you read the Frequently Asked Questions page the Romney campaign put up about the 2011 returns and the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) summary of the Romneys’ 1990-2009 taxes? You should, for the humor value, if nothing else.
In question 9, we learn how PwC calculated the average effective tax rate: they added the tax rate for each year, then divided by 20. This tells us almost nothing, as many observers (here’s one, h/t Think Progress) have pointed out: $50 million taxed at 10% (though the campaign claims it was never less than 13.7%) and $5 million taxed at 30% would yield an average tax rate of 20%, using the PwC method, when the true tax rate would be 11.8% ($6.5/$55) in this example.
In the very next question, however, we learn that for the total of federal taxes, state taxes, and charitable contributions (38.49%), PwC used the proper averaging methodology! In other words, adding up all the payment dollars and dividing by the total adjusted gross income (though we don’t know what tricks he used before adjusted gross income). Why didn’t they do that for tax alone?
In 2011, the Romneys’ charitable contributions came to just over twice their federal income tax ($4 million vs. $1.9 million). If that ratio applied for the entire 1990-2009 period, that would make the federal tax portion less than 13% (even lower because I have ignored state taxes). Of course, we have no way of knowing the real rate for federal or state taxes, or charitable deductions, without seeing the actual tax returns.
But wait, there’s more! Don’t forget all the offshore accounts! To do this question and answer justice, I’ll have to quote it in full:
12. There are some investments that seem to be established in offshore accounts, like the Cayman Islands and Bermuda. Are these investments evading taxes?
Note the misdirection in the question, “evading” rather than “avoiding” taxes, which describe illegal and legal maneuvers respectively. Few people think Romney has broken the law, though Nicholas Shaxson considers it to be a possibility.
No, the investments by the blind trusts in funds established in the Cayman Islands or other jurisdictions are taxed in the very same way they would be if the shares were held in the US rather than through a Cayman fund. No taxes are evaded or reduced. These funds are all registered with the IRS and report all income to investors and the IRS, just like domestic funds. Whether in Bermuda or Boston or elsewhere, there is no difference in how they are taxed.
If this were true, why would the funds need to be organized in the Cayman Islands? Boston would be a lot more convenient. No, as Richard Murphy of Tax Research UK told me, these funds are set up to allow round tripping by U.S. investors to avoid U.S. taxes, though some foreigners may also take advantage of them. Moreover, if foreigners are exempt from U.S. taxes like the Unrelated Business Income Tax, what need do they have to invest through the Caymans except to avoid taxes at home? Finally, we know from the Gawker revelations that at least two Cayman funds the Romneys invested in created five blocker corporations, which are set up precisely to allow round-tripping by Americans. How can these funds be established in the Cayman Islands, etc., for any reason other than tax avoidance?
In addition, it is important to note that there are no offshore accounts. These are investments in funds that are organized outside the US.
A fund organized in a secrecy jurisdiction like the Caymans, Bermuda, or Luxembourg is offshore by definition.
Further, it is important to note that Governor Romney did not make these investments. Governor and Mrs. Romney’s assets are managed on a blind basis. They do not control the investment of these assets. The assets are under the control and overall management of an independent trustee.
We’ve known since 1994 what Romney thinks of blind trusts, calling Senator Ted Kennedy’s “a ruse.”
Finally, the trustee did not choose where the investments were located any more than a stockholder in a Fortune 500 company chooses where that company is organized. Only the sponsor of the fund decides where it is organized. That responsibility is totally outside the control of a passive investor like Gov. Romney or the trustee of his blind trust.
And a stockholder can sell his shares. Has trustee Brad Malt never heard of “divestment”? I was one of thousands of people active in the late 1970s to get our universities to sell stock in companies doing business in South Africa, the “divestment movement.” While we weren’t very successful at Princeton, students and faculty at many other universities were, and some major local government funds divested from such firms, too, leading companies like Citicorp to end their South African operations. Malt could sell if he wanted to.
The bottom line is the “same as it ever was,” one tax system for the 1% and another one for the rest of us.
cross posted with Middle Class Political Economist
Source: Angry Bear
by Kenneth Thomas
Every State’s State/Local Tax System Taxes the Poor More than the Wealthy–And All Exceed Federal Taxes
A new report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) shows that in every state in the country, the bottom 20% of households pay more of their income in state and local taxes than does the top 1%. Washington state was the worst, where the bottom 20% pay a whopping 17.3% of their income in state and local taxes. This was followed by Florida at 13.5% and Illinois at 13.0%. Though the report hints at an exception, a reading of their appendix shows that the only one is the District of Columbia.
by Kenneth Thomas
The situation of the middle class is a hot topic these days, and rightly so. In addition to James Carville and Stan Greenberg’s recent book, It’s the Middle Class, Stupid, new books are out by Donald Barlett & James Steele, Jeff Faux, and Mike Lofgren.Together, they advance our understanding of middle class issues significantly.
Barlett and Steele have been sounding the alarm about middle class decline since they wrote the first newspaper articles forming the core of 1992′s America: What Went Wrong?
Source: Angry Bear
by Kenneth Thomas
Contra Eric Cantor, Labor Day celebrates the importance of labor and the labor movement in American history. But the bluster of Cantor, where he celebrates the so-called job creators, does illustrate that organized labor has been in decline in this country for quite some time.
One result of having a weak labor movement is that average wages in the United States have fallen behind those of 10 other industrialized democracies that are members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). What is most confounding, for Republicans at least, is that nine of these countries also have lower unemployment, which contradicts their view that high wages (and high minimum wages) harm employment.
The table below below is constructed from data at OECD StatExtracts, showing the average earnings of all wage and salary workers in each country, as well as its most recent unemployment rate (usually July 2012).
Source: OECD StatExtracts.
For average wages, select data by theme, then labour, then earnings, then average annual wages, and use “2011 USD exchange rates and 2011 constant prices” for each country. For unemployment, select data by theme, then labour, then labour force statistics, then short-term statistics, then short-term labour market statistics, then harmonized unemployment rates.
Source: Angry Bear
by Kenneth Thomas
Hilarious twist on “You didn’t build that!” UPDATED
The Atlantic Wire (via @NoBigGovDuh) has a great story on the dishonesty of Mitt Romney’s “You didn’t build that” ads. It turns out that at the Republican convention on Tuesday night, they plan to ramp it up again with a speech by a small business owner from Delaware, Sher Valenzuela, telling everyone how she did build it, not government.
Only one small problem. Actually, two.
First, Valenzuela’s business, First State Manufacturing, “received more than $2 million in federal loans and more than $15 million in federal contracts over the years,” according to the article. This included Small Business Administration money very early on, as well as federal disaster relief loans after 9/11 and loans from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. So, beyond the fact that she obviously didn’t build the roads and bridges and other infrastructure–which the President was actually referring to in his speech Romney has so grossly twisted in his ads–she benefited mightily from more direct government aid. Even a month ago, we knew that lots of companies Romney promoted with this tagline actually had gotten direct government support, too.
Second, a fast-thinking Redditor figured out that Valenzuela had not claimed www.firststatemanufacturing.com
Source: Angry Bear
by Kenneth Thomas
A lot of people lament the decline in manufacturing employment, which has fallen by about 1/3 since 2000. As Upjohn Institute economist Susan Houseman points out in the linked article, we’re talking about 5.5 million lost manufacturing jobs in that time frame. Here’s what it looks like in long perspective
Instead of recovering as it did in previous recessions, after the 2001 recession manufacturing employment continued to fall, as Houseman points out.
But a number of commentators, including Matthew Yglesias and some more conservative ones cited by Houseman, have argued that what we really ought to be looking at is manufacturing output, which has risen steadily except for small blips during recessions.
What’s wrong with needing fewer people in manufacturing due to greatly increased productivity?
Source: Angry Bear
by Kenneth Thomas
Gawker (via Eman at Daily Kos) dropped a bombshell yesterday when it released over 950 pages of confidential documents from 21 Bain Capital-related investment vehicles, all of which Mitt or Ann Romney invested in. It made all 48 documents into a single searchable one here so that others could take a look and see what nuggets it might contain.
Source: Angry Bear
by Kenneth Thomas
Most U.S. Trade Agreement Improve Trade Balance, but Effect Overwhelmed by NAFTA and China Trade
The U.S. trade deficit figures heavily in the analysis of Jeff Faux’s new book, The Servant Economy. Faux, the founder of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), was one of the most important voices speaking out against NAFTA when it was debated and ultimately passed by Congress in 1993.
According to EPI’s 2011 Annual Report,”Presently, the United States’ non-oil deficit alone costs more than five million U.S. jobs.” This underscores the importance of the deficit and what is at stake. In the book, Faux points out that the theoretical benefits of free trade assume full employment, but that is hardly ever the case. Thus, he argues, the trade deficit is indeed a job killer.
Yet, as David Cay Johnston notes, the United States continues to negotiate new trade agreements while government agencies and government officials from the President down, tout them as engines of job creation. Johnston points out that the government predicted that our small pre-NAFTA trade surplus would continue, when instead we quickly went into a deficit that in 2011 reached $64.5 billion. Similarly, he says, the U.S. International Trade Commission predicted that normalizing trade relations with China would lead to a trade deficit of just $1 billion, when in fact it grew by 2011 to $295 billion!
How have these trade agreements performed? At present, according to the U.S. Trade Representative, the U.S. has free trade agreements with 19 other countries, with a 20th (with Panama) approved but not yet implemented. The 19 countries are: Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Israel, Jordan, South Korea, Mexico, Morocco, Nicaragua, Oman, Peru, and Singapore.
Source: Angry Bear
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