Doing the math: Maybe 2 + 2 doesn't equal 5 or 3 or whatever
Mitt Romney’s confession
By Editorial Board, WashPost, Published: September 15
FOR SEVERAL weeks, we’ve been asking Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney to explain how he can cut taxes, as promised, without adding to the nation’s debt, as also promised. Now he’s effectively let the cat out of the bag: He can’t.
Mr. Romney’s tax plan calls for reducing income tax rates by 20 percent. The top bracket would go from 35 percent to 28 percent. He has said that he can do this in a revenue-neutral way by eliminating loopholes. While the rich might pay more, he has said, the middle class would pay less.
There are a couple of pitfalls here. The first is that while closing loopholes sounds good — Make those oil companies pay! — the costliest ones are cherished by most Americans. These are tax provisions that promote home ownership, charitable giving, and employer-provided health care and that allow taxpayers to deduct their state and local income taxes. Limiting or eliminating these popular “loopholes” would be extremely difficult.
The second obstacle, as shown by the Tax Policy Center, a joint venture of the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, is that Mr. Romney’s plan is mathematically impossible, even if it were politically feasible. Take away every deduction from every wealthy household, the center calculated, and you still couldn’t make up the revenue the government would lose by reducing rates without raising taxes on middle-class households.
(More here.)
FOR SEVERAL weeks, we’ve been asking Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney to explain how he can cut taxes, as promised, without adding to the nation’s debt, as also promised. Now he’s effectively let the cat out of the bag: He can’t.
Mr. Romney’s tax plan calls for reducing income tax rates by 20 percent. The top bracket would go from 35 percent to 28 percent. He has said that he can do this in a revenue-neutral way by eliminating loopholes. While the rich might pay more, he has said, the middle class would pay less.
There are a couple of pitfalls here. The first is that while closing loopholes sounds good — Make those oil companies pay! — the costliest ones are cherished by most Americans. These are tax provisions that promote home ownership, charitable giving, and employer-provided health care and that allow taxpayers to deduct their state and local income taxes. Limiting or eliminating these popular “loopholes” would be extremely difficult.
The second obstacle, as shown by the Tax Policy Center, a joint venture of the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, is that Mr. Romney’s plan is mathematically impossible, even if it were politically feasible. Take away every deduction from every wealthy household, the center calculated, and you still couldn’t make up the revenue the government would lose by reducing rates without raising taxes on middle-class households.
(More here.)
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