Mitt Romney may be the slipperiest worm I've ever seen in politics. He's also one of the most transparent. People have widely noted that, by not taking all of the deductions to which he was entitled on his 2011 taxes, he raised his effective tax rate from about 9% to about 14% -- allowing him to continue to say that he's never (recently) paid under 13% of his income in taxes.
That's quite slippery -- but that's not nearly the worst of it. The worst of it is that, within the next three years, Mitt Romney will have been able to retroactively pay only 9% on his taxes after all.
Why? Because you can amend your tax return.
That means that, after the election (win or lose), Romney can simply turn in a new tax return in which he takes all of the deductions to which he is entitled. Hello, 9% rate!
Luckily for him, if he really wants to have paid 14% by not taking his deductions -- his probably embarrassing deductions, like on dressage horses, but that's his problem -- there's a way to make that choice irrevocable. Let's see if he has the guts to do it -- and to show people that he's not just paying a cheap trick on them.
It's not complicated. All Mitt has to do is:
1. Take all of the deductions to which he is entitled.
2. After receiving the additional refund, make a gift of it to the U.S. Treasury.
Now before you say "but why should Mitt have to make a gift of that much money to the U.S. Treasury?", bear something in mind:
that's EXACTLY what he's doing by not taking the deductions to which he's entitled -- IF he doesn't play to retroactively reverse the process and claim his rebate!
So all I'm asking him to do here is to do what he's already claiming credit for doing -- but to do it IRREVOCABLY.
In other words -- if he wants to be ablee to say, in September 2012, that he paid almost 14% in 2011 income taxes, then he can't leave himself the ability to receive a #RetroactiveRebate.
(Twitter users, that hash tag and lack of internal spacing is there for a reason. Get busy with it!)
There's a very serious point here. One important thing that a Presidential Administration does is to release figures -- largely about money and other economic statistics. One measure by which to judge a President -- and a Presidency -- is on whether those figures appear to be honest or deceptive. (My sense is that Presidents Obama, Clinton, and Carter passed that "honesty" test; Presidents Reagan, Bush, and Shrub did not. That's part of why the latter three ballooned the deficit so badly.)
Mitt Romney is, so far as I can tell, needlessly leaving himself a way open to pull a fast one on us. If he wants us to believe him, then he has to make his kind donation to the U.S. Treasury irrevocable -- otherwise, it's worse than useless. It's not only an abysmally low tax rate for a man of his income, but it's hiding the truth. And voters have to ask, if he'll hide the truth here and now -- when he's about to fact the voters in the biggest election of his life -- then where and where won't he?
So let's see if Mitt will indeed be willing to throw out another couple of million dollars (or whatever) to support his own Presidential bid. We don't want to see him fake-toss it and instead palm it and put it back in his pocket. If he wants credit for paying so much in taxes, he had better make it real.
No #RetroactiveRebate for Mitt. Let's make it a little harder for him to lie to us.