CU professor calls “BS” on Romney’s 13 percent tax rate claim
Source: Fox Denver
“What Romney’s saying is technically true, but it’s misleading,” Victor Fleischer told FOX31 Denver. “The reason it’s misleading is because it’s 13 percent of what?
“Of his taxable income, that may be true. But you can have a lot of economic income that isn’t taxable and Romney has shown himself to be quite sophisticated in keeping his taxable income low even as his economic income remains high.
“He’s got interests in a lot of different investment stocks, and he can basically choose when he wants to recognize income from those funds. So he can use capital losses to offset capital gains and keep his taxable income low.”
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“When you have a wide portfolio of investments, you can have a good year, but still not have a lot of taxable income, as long as you sell some losers as well as some winners,” Fleischer explained to FOX31 Denver. “That appears to be what Romney did in 2009, paid tax on whatever income he had, but it doesn’t mean he paid a lot.”
Read more:
http://kdvr.com/2012/08/16/romney-on-taxes-ive-paid-at-least-13-percent/--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I think this may explain why the Obama campaign has dared the Romney campaign to just produce three more years of returns even though five years of return is still far below the norm for a Presidential candidate. Romney may say he paid a 13 percent tax rate, but he is not saying that is his effective tax rate. Also, if he claimed a lot of losses, he might only be paying a tax rate on a nominal amount of reported income, thus rendering his effective tax rate close to zero.
The interesting thing about this story is that it appears on a Fox affiliate station in Colorado.
