The contents of Romney's tax returns: What would be able to brush off?

[krazen1211]

Paying a very low tax rate didn't really bother the liberals who voted for Kerry and Edwards. Nobody cares.

[krazen1211]

Paying a very low tax rate didn't really bother the liberals who voted for Kerry and Edwards. Nobody cares.

Depends on how low low is. Obviously, the rate Romney paid in 2010 was enough not to upset people. But what if the effective rate he'd paid in other years was zero, or close to zero?
There's also a bit of a difference between paying very little in tax, but advocating higher taxes for people like yourself, and paying very little in tax, and advocating still lower taxes for people like yourself.

John Edwards paid roughly 5% in 2003. Perhaps if Romney is below 5% he might have an issue, but the partisans will of course overlook his taxes.

The Democrats got demolished among 6 figure incomes in the 2010 elections. I welcome the new advertisements soon to come on how they want to raise income taxes on the people!

[krazen1211]

Paying a very low tax rate didn't really bother the liberals who voted for Kerry and Edwards. Nobody cares.

Depends on how low low is. Obviously, the rate Romney paid in 2010 was enough not to upset people. But what if the effective rate he'd paid in other years was zero, or close to zero?
There's also a bit of a difference between paying very little in tax, but advocating higher taxes for people like yourself, and paying very little in tax, and advocating still lower taxes for people like yourself.

John Edwards paid roughly 5% in 2003. Perhaps if Romney is below 5% he might have an issue, but the partisans will of course overlook his taxes.

The Democrats got demolished among 6 figure incomes in the 2010 elections. I welcome the new advertisements soon to come on how they want to raise income taxes on the people!

Edwards also didn't win the nomination. And, for that matter, part of why Kerry lost the general election was that people saw him as rich and out of touch. His tax situation, and his wife's wealth arguably played some role in that, though how much of a role is hard to quantify. And again, the fact that Romney wants to cut his own taxes even further makes the question of his taxes more salient than it was for Kerry and Edwards. Remember how Perot said he was proud to pay millions of dollars in taxes, because it meant he'd done well?

But overall, I'd agree that it's hard to see what in Romney's taxes could really hurt him more than refusing to release his taxes will. So he should just release them already and get it over with, before the Olympics and the conventions change the conversation.

It might be more salient to a bunch of hypocritical Democrats with amnesia who are hollering about it, yes. But conservative voters are far less likely to fret about Mr. Romney's perfectly normal tax rate and are hardly militant voters concerning 'taxing the rich'.

As it happened, when election day 2004 rolled around, John Kerry got precisely the share of the vote that could be expected by President Bush's approval rating. The amnesia left got over it. Others will too, soon.

Teresa Kerry released a small segment of her 2003 tax return in mid October 2004. As it stands, polling averages actually contracted very slightly afterward! Turns out nobody cared about her taxes.


Incidentally, today, some Senate Democrats are trying to close the John Edwards loopholes.

[krazen1211]

Sounds like we're basically in agreement, then, that Romney's tax returns are unlikely to have much effect on partisan voters. We may differ slightly on the impact on independent voters, but I'd be curious to know whether you think Romney is better off releasing the returns, not releasing them, or whether you think it makes no difference one way or the other. I've suggested that he'd likely be better off releasing them, because that would make the issue go away. What do you think?

I suspect if they are similar enough to his 2010 tax return he will release a couple eventually. But it likely makes little difference.

His real issue is that he is thus far getting heavily outspent. Presumably he is planning a heavy fall flooding of the airwaves.