Pay attention.  It is astounding to me how much information is out there regarding Mitt Romney’s tax plan and yet … CONSERVATIVES have been conditioned to vote for the Republican time and time again.  All of this is despite the fact that Mitt Romney’s tax plan would raise taxes on the middle class in order to pay for tax cuts for the rich.  That’s the bottom line.  Don’t take my word for it.

Former McCain campaign adviser and Chief Economist at Moody’s says it as plain as day HERE:

Yeah, I think the Tax Policy Center study is the definitive study. They’re non-partisan, they’re very good. They say given the numbers that they’ve been provided by the Romney campaign, no, it will not add up. Now, the Romney campaign could adjust their plan. They could say okay I’m not going to lower tax rates as much as I’m saying right now and they could make the arithmetic work. But under the current plan, with the current numbers, no it doesn’t. I’ll say one other thing, though. I think it is important that we do focus on the so-called tax expenditures in the tax code. Those are the deductions, and credits, and loopholes in the code. We need to reduce those, because if we do we’re going to make the tax system fairer, easier to understand and ultimately lead to stronger growth. So that’s the right place to focus. But, no, the arithmetic doesn’t work as it is right now.

We’ve shared the study before HERE; an excerpt:

Our major conclusion is that a revenue-neutral individual income tax change that incorporates the features Governor Romney has proposed – including reducing marginal tax rates substantially, eliminating the individual alternative minimum tax (AMT) and maintaining all tax breaks for saving and investment – would provide large tax cuts to high-income households, and increase the tax burdens on middle- and/or lower-income taxpayers.

This is true even when we bias our assumptions about which and whose tax expenditures are reduced to make the resulting tax system as progressive as possible. For instance, even when we assume that tax breaks – like the charitable deduction, mortgage interest deduction, and the exclusion for health insurance – are completely eliminated for higher-income households first, and only then reduced as necessary for other households to achieve overall revenue-neutrality– the net effect of the plan would be a tax cut for high-income households coupled with a tax increase for middle-income households.

Romney claims that there are five studies backing up his math; Politifact rates that “mostly false” HERE.

Conservative journalist George Will says the math doesn’t add up HERE:

“There is uncertainty surrounding the Romney-Ryan tax cut plan, because they have not specified the deductions that will be closed.  And we know where the big money is: mortgage interest deductions, charitable deductions, taxing that’s compensation, which it is, employee-provided health insurance, and state and local taxes. All of those, you either hit only the rich, in which case you don’t get much money, or you hit the middle class.”

A Fox “journalist” actually says “How can you not tell the people these facts” HERE.

Romney says he’ll cut the marginal tax rate for the rich from 35% to 28% and cut deductions to make it revenue neutral.  The only problem is – there aren’t enough deductions for the rich to pay for that cut so the only way to make it revenue neutral is to cut deductions that the middle class enjoy and thus – they would see their taxes increased.  Here are a list of the deductions and what they cost.

Romney already said to 60 Minutes that he believes it is absolutely fair and good for economic growth for him to pay 15% but for the middle class to pay more; so we know he’s not cutting any of the tax breaks for capital gains.  He’s like to move them to zero if he could.

As I’ve explained HERE – there is another simple explanation to understand that Romney is going to cut taxes for the rich big time:

If Romney had his way – he would completely eliminate both the estate tax and the alternative minimum tax which was put in place to prevent the rich from avoiding taxes.  To eliminate those two taxes would not only be giveaways to the rich … they’re worth $2.5 trillion collectively over 10 years.  How will Governor Romney pay for the $2.5 trillion in tax cuts that go mostly to the rich here?  If you’re reducing them to zero … there are no deductions to eliminate to pay for them with.  He might say other deductions in the tax code … but which?  We don’t know.

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