Last week, 2012 GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney finally admitted that his tax rate is around 15 percent, due to the fact that the overwhelming majority of his income comes from investments. Despite paying a lower rate than many middle class families, Romney said during a GOP primary debate tonight in Florida that he is “proud of the fact” that he pays “a lot of taxes.” Watch it:

Romney added that “I’d like to see our tax rate come down,” and indeed, under the tax plan that Romney has put forward, his own taxes would be cut nearly in half. Under current law, Romney would pay about a 24 percent tax rate in 2013. However, if his own plan were in place, that rate would fall dramatically:

[Citizens for Tax Justice] calculated what Romney would pay if his own plan passed. That is, if you kept the Bush tax cuts in place, including keeping the capital gains tax at 15 percent, and scrapped the Medicare tax, as Romney wants to do.

Under that system, Romney would pay a rate of a little under 15 percent — because virtually all his income is from capital gains and dividends.

The group calculates that this means Romney’s plan would give him a tax cut of more than 40 percent.

Overall, the wealthy would do very well under Romney’s tax plan, with millionaires receiving a $150,000 annual tax cut. In fact, Romney’s proposed tax cut for millionaires is twice the size of the Bush tax cuts.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R) caused a stir during last week’s Republican presidential primary debate when he released his 2010 tax return and revealed that he had paid a 31.5 percent tax rate on $3.14 million in income. The release came amid widespread calls for Gingrich’s fellow candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R), to release his own tax returns, after Romney admitted his tax rate was about 15 percent.

But further scrutiny of Gingrich’s own returns from tax experts has revealed that his tax rate should have been even higher. That’s because, according to Forbes, Gingrich dodged “tens of thousands of dollars in Medicare payroll taxes” by classifying most of his income from two companies he owns as profits and dividends, therefore avoiding the payroll tax — a technique the IRS has “consistently and successfully attacked” in the past. Newt and Callista Gingrich classified only $444,327 of their income from Gingrich Holdings and Gingrich Productions as ordinary income. Meanwhile, the other $2.4 million earned was classified as profits or dividends, meaning it was not subject to payroll taxes.

According to tax experts interviewed by Forbes, that means Gingrich is dodging taxes he likely should be paying:

“It appears that he is not paying his fair share of Medicare tax,’’ Robert E. McKenzie, a partner in the Chicago law firm of Arnstein & Lehr LLP concluded, in an email to Forbes, after reviewing Gingrich’s 2010 tax return. McKenzie, a past chairman of the Employment Tax Committee of the American Bar Association Tax Section and a member of the IRS’ Advisory Council, added: “There are a multitude of cases where the IRS has successfully challenged the improper tax strategy of this candidate and his accountants. Service businesses are only allowed to distribute a fair return on investment from an S corp. as profits exempt from Medicare taxes. The remainder of profits must be paid as salary subject to a 2.9% Medicare tax levy.”

As Forbes notes, the IRS has specific rules on how payments from a small business like Gingrich Holdings should be treated for tax purposes, and the amount Gingrich says he invested in his companies — between $500,000 and $1 million — is likely “far too little” to “justify booking $2.4 million as profit.” The ploy, however, is used widely. According to the Government Accountability Office, S corps. like Gingrich Holdings underpaid wages by $24 billion in 2003 and 2004, allowing owners to avoid payroll taxes.

Gingrich’s dodge of Medicare taxes, though, pales in comparison to the tax break he’d give himself should he get to the White House. His tax reform plan calls for a flat 15 percent tax rate, slashing his effective rate to 14.6 percent and giving himself a $540,000 tax break in the process.

2012 GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney today broke out a harsher line on Newt Gingrich, Saturday’s winner of the South Carolina GOP primary, once again saying that the former speaker of the House should give back the $1.7 million in payments he received from mortgage giant Freddie Mac. “He said in a debate, actually, that people who profited from the failed model of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae ought to give back their money,” Romney noted. “Well, the speaker made $1.7 million in his enterprises from providing services to Freddie Mac. He ought to give it back.”

But Romney is throwing stones from within his own glass house, as he also profits from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, as the Boston Globe detailed back in September:

On his financial disclosure statement filed last month, Romney reported owning between $250,001 and $500,000 in a mutual fund that invests in debt notes of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, among other government entities. Over the previous year, he had reported earning between $15,001 and $50,000 in interest from those investments.

And unlike most of Romney’s financial holdings, which are held in a blind trust that is overseen by a trustee and not known to Romney, this particular investment was among those that would have been known to Romney.

Over the weekend, Romney intends to start airing an ad that will say, “While Florida families lost everything in the housing crisis, Newt Gingrich cashed in. Gingrich was paid over $1.6 million by the scandal-ridden agency that helped create the crisis.” Shockingly enough, the ad fails to mention Romney’s own investments in the government backed mortgage giants, which have netted him tens of thousands of dollars.

Under an obscure Florida law, stadiums that take taxpayer subsidies must serve as homeless shelters on the nights when they are not hosting events. With more than 50,000 residents living on the streets, Florida has the nation’s third-largest homeless population, giving the 18 stadiums that take taxpayer subsidies the opportunity to provide a valuable, and necessary, public good.

But according to two Florida Republicans, the stadiums aren’t holding up their end of the deal. Despite taking more than $271 million in subsidies since Miami’s Dolphins Stadium opened in 1994, the facilities aren’t serving the homeless on off nights, and legislation filed by Sen. Mike Bennett (R) and Rep. Frank Artiles (R) would force the stadiums to refund the tax money if they haven’t complied with the law, the Miami Herald reports:

Sen. Mike Bennett (R-Bradenton) and Rep. Frank Artiles (R-Miami) have filed bills that would require stadiums to return money to the state if they have not been complying with the homeless shelter law.

“These organizations have failed to follow the law for over 20 years,” said Artiles, in a statement .”This is the simply the State of Florida holding them accountable.”

Of the $271 million taken since 1994, Miami’s Dolphins Stadium ($37 million) and the city of Jacksonville ($35.1 million) have received the most money. The state’s three NFL venues have taken more than $102.1 million from the state over that time, while its two NBA arenas have taken roughly $35.3 million since 1998. Florida’s 10 spring training facilities, used by Major League Baseball teams for less than two months a year, have taken a total of $37.5 million since 2001, and other stadiums have also taken subsidies, as shown in this chart from the Miami Herald:

While the stadiums take massive subsides, homelessness, particularly among children, has continually increased in Florida since the recession began, and it remains a problem even as the economy inches toward recovery. Bennett and Artiles’ bills, should they become law, would change that, forcing the stadiums to do their part in helping the state’s neediest residents.

Last week, Mitt Romney finally admitted that he pays a tax rate of 15 percent, lower than that of many middle-class families. Romney is taxed at such a low rate because, as he freely admits, all of his income comes from investments, and is thus subject to the top capital gains tax rate of 15 percent, rather than the top income tax rate of 35 percent.

However, Romney has refused to sign on to the Obama administration’s “Buffett rule,” which aims to ensure that millionaires can’t dodge taxes to the extent that they’re paying less than teachers. Today, billionaire investor Warren Buffett himself was asked about Romney’s tax rate, replying that letting millionaire investors like Romney pay such low taxes is “the wrong policy” because he makes his income by just “shoving around money”:

He makes his money the same way I make my money. He makes money by moving around big bucks, not by straining his back and going to work cleaning the toilets or whatever it may be. He makes it shoving around money. I make it shoving around money. If you look at the 400 highest incomes in the United States, they average $220 million. Something like 90 of them are effectively unemployed. They have no earned income, and that number has gone up over the years. [...]

It’s the wrong policy to have. Nothing wrong about [Romney] doing that. He will not pay more than the law requires. I don’t fault him for that in the least, but I do fault the law that allows him and me, earning enormous sums to pay over all federal taxes at a rate that is about half what the average person in my office pays.

Watch it:

Not only does Romney make all of his money from investments, but his company Bain Capital (with which Romney still has a lucrative retirement deal) uses tax havens to boost its profits.

Before a GOP presidential primary debate in Nevada, the state with the highest foreclosure rate in the nation, Mitt Romney said that the government should not try and prevent foreclosures. “Let it run its course and hit the bottom,” Romney explained.

With the GOP primary shifting to Florida, after Newt Gingrich’s win over the weekend in South Carolina, foreclosures are again on the list of issues to address, as the Sunshine State is seventh in the nation in foreclosures. One in every 360 housing units in Florida received at least one foreclosure notice in December. And it seems that Romney is changing his tune a bit from the last time he had to seriously address housing, seemingly telling a roundtable in Tampa Bay today that he thinks banks should have to write down mortgage principal — the amount outstanding on a mortgage — for borrowers who find themselves with a mortgage that costs more than their house is currently worth:

We’re just so overleveraged, so much debt in our society, and some of the institutions that hold it aren’t willing to write it off and say they made a mistake, they loaned too much, we’re overextended and write those down and start over. They keep on trying to harangue and pretend that what they have on their books is still what it’s worth…It’s helpful if you get an institution that’s willing to work with you, but if you don’t, you have very little option. [...]

The idea that somehow this is going to cure itself all by itself is probably not real. There’s going to have to be a much more concerted effort to work with the lending institutions and help them take action which is in their best interest and the best interest of the homeowners.

Watch it:

This is a far cry from his call to allow the housing market to “hit the bottom” unaided. In fact, the Obama administration has tried to implement policy to incentivize banks into modifying mortgages, making the same argument that Romney made today: that continued foreclosures are in nobody’s interest. (And Romney’s own top economic adviser has been pushing a plan for mass mortgage refinancing.)

Reducing principal for underwater borrowers (who owe more on their mortgage than their house is worth, due to the plunge in home values following the financial crisis) is a policy prescription for which progressives have been advocating, much to the consternation of Republicans. A couple of weeks ago, Senate Republicans reacted with outrage with the New York Federal Reserve suggested a program of principal reductions.

A report from the The New Bottom Line — a coalition of community, faith-based and labor groups — found that “if banks wrote down all underwater mortgages to market value and refinanced the homeowners into 30-year, fixed-rate loans at current market interest rates, that would pump $71 billion into the national economy.” Congressional Democrats have been pushing the Federal Housing Finance Agency to write down government back loans, but the FHFA has been resisting. And evidently Romney feels that the FHFA’s course of action is incorrect.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) admitted last week that his tax rate was about 15 percent because his income mainly comes from investments that are taxed at lower rates than normal income. Romney’s income is also bolstered by the fact that several of his investments — worth millions of dollars — take advantage of offshore tax havens in the Cayman Islands to boost profits.

Many of those investments are associated with Bain Capital, the private equity firm Romney co-founded, which has an extensive history of using such tax havens to boost profits at a multi-billion dollar cost to American taxpayers. Those tax havens aren’t just causing outrage among Americans, however. The Cayman Islands are a British territory, and British MP John Cryer, a former member of the British Treasury Select Committee, told the British blog Left Foot Forward that it is “a disgrace” that corporations and investors like Romney and Bain can use them to avoid paying taxes:

“As a former member of the Treasury select committee, I think it is a disgrace that the Cayman Islands, a tax haven, can enable wealthy corporations and individuals such as Mitt Romney and others in the wealthiest 1% to avoid tax and still be cloaked in secrecy. Meanwhile all across the western world, hard-working people are seeing their living standards and take-home pay stagnate or reduced.

“It reminds me of President Kennedy’s comment in his inaugural speech, ‘pay any price, bear any burden’. Except it’s hard-working, modestly paid majority who are bearing that burden.”

According to Left Foot Forward, Cryer proposed a motion last week calling on the House of Commons to immediately close the Cayman Islands as a tax haven. The motion states that the House is “alarmed” by reports that Romney and others are using the Caymans to “avoid paying the same tax rate as other US citizens” and “concerned about the continued use of tax havens by the top 1% in the US and UK to avoid paying the correct tax in their own country.” The motion then “calls on the UK government to introduce urgent legislation to help close tax havens and increase transparency so that the very richest pay their fair share of tax in their respective countries.”

The United States loses $100 billion a year in tax revenue to offshore tax havens like the Caymans, according to the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.