Romney’s New Tax Plan Would Hit The Middle Class

Mitt Romney’s math still doesn’t add up.

The Republican nominee for president’s proposed new tax breaks would cost $294 billion in their first year, according to a new study by Citizens For Tax Justice. The deductions he’s proposed would only pay for 36 percent of that increase.

Romney has only been clear about which taxes he wants to cut. They include extending the Bush tax breaks for all incomes, eliminating the Estate Tax, repealing the Alternate Minimum Tax and eliminating all taxes on investment income on people earning less than $200,000 a year. In addition he would cut federal taxes on everyone who pays them by 20 percent.

Romney has said “Of course!” the numbers add up, but has refused to name the deductions he would eliminate to make the tax cuts revenue-neutral as he’s promised. In the second debate he suggested that he would set a deduction cap at a fixed number such as $25,000. That would pay for less than half of his cuts. And result in new tax breaks for many rich Americans.

“Eighty-eight percent of the richest one percent would still see a net tax cut and only 10 percent would see a net tax increase from Romney’s new tax proposals,” according to Citizens For Tax Justice.

Romney has promised that he would not cut the share of taxes paid by the rich, but if he’s cutting taxes across the board, the rich will pay a lower amount of taxes.

To pay for these cuts he would either explode the deficit or increase taxes on the middle class up to $4,000 a year.

You can read a PDF of the study here.

Photo credit: AP Photo/David Goldman