Font-page, upper right-hand corner WaPo.Mitt Romney releases tax return for 2011, showing he paid 14.1 percent tax rate
Mitt Romney paid $1.9 million in taxes on $13.69 million in income in 2011, most of it from his investments, for an effective rate of 14.1 percent, according to hundreds of pages he released Friday in a move to quiet political controversy over his personal finances.
The Republican presidential nominee could have paid less in taxes, but he engineered his 2011 returns to overpay the government to ensure that his effective tax rate would "conform" with his statement last month that he had paid at least 13 percent, according to his trustee, R. Bradford Malt.
Yes, somehow, that seems ...bad.
Romney did that by not taking full advantage of his charitable deductions. In their joint return, he and his wife, Ann, listed $4.02 million in donations to charity last year -- nearly 30 percent of their income -- which substantially reduced their tax obligation. They claimed a deduction for only $2.25 million of those contributions.
But charity doesn't count, because it's anti-socialist and The One dies not give away 30% of his income.
Had the Romneys deducted all of their charitable donations, they would have paid about $467,000 less in taxes for an effective rate of 10.55 percent, according to an analysis by Rebecca Wilkins, a tax lawyer with the Citizens for Tax Justice. Romney can amend his returns at any point over the next three years to take advantage of the potential deductions.
Aha! So he plans to refile after he's elected! Proof positive!
And if you can't believe a spokesperson at 'Citizens for Tax Justice', who can you believe?
If the Romneys had not taken any charitable deductions, their rate would have been 18.8 percent, said Wilkins, who studied the returns and used accounting software to determine their effective rates.The slimeball! Who put those allowances for charity in the tax code? Who? The Congress? Oh.