Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney released his latest tax reform plan today in Arizona and highlighted specifically the fact that it provided a 20-percent across-the-board cut in marginal tax rates for all Americans.
Upon unveiling the plan, Romney claimed that it would actually force the richest Americans to pay their fair share. Speaking of tax exemptions and deductions, Romney said, “For the high-income folks, we’re going to cut back on that, so that we make sure that the top 1 percent keeps paying the current share they’re paying or more.”
But when former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) attacked Romney at the GOP debate tonight, Romney admitted that his tax plan contained a massive tax cut for the wealthiest Americans:
SANTORUM: Governor Romney even today suggested today raising taxes on the top 1 percent, adopting the Occupy Wall Street rhetoric. I’m not going to adopt that rhetoric. I’m going to represent 100 percent of Americans. We’re not raising taxes on anyone.
ROMNEY: Number one, I said that we’re going to cut taxes on everyone across the country by 20 percent, including the top 1 percent. So that’s number one.
Watch it:
According to analysis by Center for American Progress Tax and Budget Policy Director Michael Linden, Romney’s claims that his plan would raise taxes on the rich was false. His later claims, that it would provide a tax break to the rich, are indeed true.
Romney’s plan to give a 20-percent tax cut, lowering rates for the wealthiest Americans from 35 percent to 28 percent, and repeal the alternative minimum tax would, as Romney admitted tonight, provide a huge tax break to the richest Americans, at a cost four times higher than the Bush tax cuts. “The enormity of these tax cuts is mind-boggling,” Linden said. “Even more unbelievable is how skewed they are to those the very top of the income ladder.”
