Today, while speaking at a campaign rally in Westerville, Ohio to a crowd of mostly middle-class attendees, Romney stated:
We have got to reform our tax system. Small businesses most typically pay taxes at the individual tax rate. And so our individual income taxes are the ones I want to reform. Make them simpler. I want to bring the rates down. By the way, don’t be expecting a huge cut in taxes because I’m also going to lower deductions and exemptions. But by bringing rates down we will be able to let small businesses keep more of their money so they can hire more people.
Now this could be just a slip-up (he has a penchant for them). But as the Tax Policy Center concluded, the only way Romney’s plan could possibly work is to eliminate deductions and exemptions not just for what he calls the middle-income, $200,000-$250,000 and less, but indeed for any one above the $100,000 income threshold, which would include eliminating things like charitable donations, employer-provided health insurance, and home mortgage interest payments. So what did Romney mean?
