We already know Mitt Romney is a really, really wealthy guy. And, though he was born to wealth, he has also made a lot of money himself. He’s also said he’ll release information about his wealth, his assets … a lot of stuff. But just not the taxes.
So what’s the deal? It’s pretty simple. We might say that a specter is haunting Mitt Romney — the specter of the Buffett Rule.
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This is Romney’s problem. While we don’t know the specifics of Romney’s tax returns, we know enough about his finances and sources of incomes to know that he is the poster-boy for the Buffett Rule. As Romney likes to say, he’s unemployed. He doesn’t draw a salary. But he seems to still be making big big money off capital gains which are currently taxed at a very low rate. He doesn’t seem to have drawn a salary at any time recently. So he likely pays no payroll taxes. And that’s before you get into legal but aggressive tax-sheltering. It seems virtually impossible that Mitt Romney doesn’t pay the sort of effective tax rate that would make people’s eyes pop when compared to middle income and even relatively wealthy (by normal standards) people who pay considerably higher rates.