One of the most revealing moments in last night’s debate came not with something Mitt Romney said but with something he tried so hard not to say.
Mitt Romney continued to serve up more whoppers than Burger King, but when it comes to his plan to reduce the tax burden on his fellow millionaires and billionaires he could not have been more clear or more emphatic. If you didn’t catch that part, it’s because Romney didn’t want you to, but he laid it right out there for all to hear, provided you were listening closely and could do a little math in your head.
More than once last night Romney spoke of his commitment to cutting taxes. Fine, so far as that goes, although there certainly remain many questions about how this will be accomplished and how this will be paid for in lost federal revenue. But when it came to making a commitment not to reduce taxes more for the top income earners than for the rest of us, Romney was characteristically cagey.
Mitt Romney said that under his tax plan, high-income households would continue to pay the same share of taxes as they pay today. "The top 5% of taxpayers will continue to pay 60% of the income tax the nation collects. So that'll stay the same," Romney said. He repeated that point several times.
Now, a promise to freeze the share of taxes paid by the rich is not at all the same as saying the tax bills of high-income filers won't go down. In fact, it’s a commitment to just the opposite.
It’s simple math: When two sums (such as the share of taxes paid by the top 5% and the share paid by everybody else) are in the ratio 60:40, reducing the smaller sum requires reducing the greater sum even more to maintain the ratio. In fact, the greater sum must be reduced by half again more than the reduction in the smaller sum, or, in ratio form, 1.5:1. In other words, in order to continue to account for 60% of the income tax revenues, the burden of the wealthiest earners must be reduced 1.5% for every 1% drop in everyone else’s tax bill.
For example, let’s say I pay $4 in taxes and my neighbor, let’s call him Mitt, pays $6. Mitt pay 60% of the taxes collected in our very tiny sample. Simple enough. Now reduce my tax bill by ten cents to $3.90. In order to maintain that 60% share, Mitt’s tax bill must be reduced to 15 cents to $5.85. Reduce my tax bill by a dollar, and Mitt’s tax bill must be reduced by a dollar and a half. You can see where this is going.
Romney was playing coy, but the meaning was clear to those who carefully parsed his words.
"The governor… will work with Congress to negotiate tax reform to ensure his goals are met," a Romney campaign spokesperson said after the debate. We know what that goal is: still more tax breaks for Romney and his wealthy chums and another kick in the ass for the middle class.