Mitt Romney's 13 percent tax rate is shameful

Mitt Romney boasts that he's paid at least 13 percent of his taxes every year. Is that supposed to be a defense?

By Robert Reich,?Guest blogger / August 20, 2012

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney walks to his car to attend a fundraising event on Saturday, Aug. 18, 2012 in Nantucket, Mass. Reich argues that Mitt Romney's super low tax rate is nothing to be proud of.

Evan Vucci/AP

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Mitt Romney says ?every year I?ve paid at least 13 percent [of my income in taxes] and if you add in addition the amount that goes to charity, why the number gets well above 20 percent.?

Skip to next paragraph Robert Reich

Robert is chancellor?s professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Clinton. Time Magazine?named him one of the 10 most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written 13 books, including ?The Work of Nations,? his latest best-seller ?Aftershock: The Next Economy and America?s Future," and a new?e-book, ?Beyond Outrage.??He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine and chairman of Common Cause.

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This is supposed to be in defense of not releasing his tax returns.

?Assume, for the sake of the argument, he?s telling the truth. Since when are charitable contributions added to income taxes when judging whether someone has paid his fair share?

More to the point, Romney admits to an income of over $20 million a year for the last several decades. Which makes his 13 percent ? or even 20 percent ? violate the principle of equal sacrifice that lies at the core of our notion of tax fairness.

?Even Adam Smith, the 18th century guru of free-market conservatives, saw the wisdom of a graduated tax embodying the principle of equal sacrifice. ?The rich should contribute to the public expense,? he wrote, ?not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more in proportion.?

?Equal sacrifice means that in paying taxes people ought to feel about the same degree of pain regardless of whether they?re wealthy or poor. Logically, this means someone earning $20 million a year should pay a much larger proportion of his income in taxes than someone earning $200,000, who in turn should pay a larger proportion than someone earning $50,000.

?But Romney?s alleged 13 percent tax rate is lower than that of most middle class Americans who earn a tiny fraction of what he earns.

?At a time when poverty is increasing, when public parks and public libraries are being closed and when public schools are shrinking their offerings and their hours, when the nation?s debt is immense, and when the 400 richest Americans have more wealth than the bottom 150 million of us put together ? Romney?s 13 percent is shameful.

The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best economy-related bloggers out there. Our guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. To contact us about a blogger, click here. This post originally ran on www.robertreich.org.

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