Romney Claims to Have Never Paid Less Than 13% in Taxes

     Not that it's very much even if it is true. Yet Romney has if anything begged even more questions rather than answered anything with his claim.

      "Under fire from Democrats for refusing to release more than two years of tax returns, Mitt Romney said Thursday that he had paid federal income taxes at a rate of at least 13% for each of the last 10 years.

President Obama’s Republican challenger told ABC last month that he was happy to check whether he had ever paid less than the 13.9% he paid in 2010. But since then, his campaign has refused to answer the question."

     At a news conference on Thursday, Romney was asked again.

   “I just have to say, given the challenges that America faces – 23 million people out of work, Iran about to become nuclear, one out of six Americans in poverty – the fascination with taxes I paid I find to be very small-minded,” Romney responded at an airport outside Greenville, S.C., where he was raising campaign money.

   "Romney said that following the ABC interview, he went back and checked what tax rates he had paid."
 
   “Over the past 10 years, I never paid less than 13%,” he said. “I think the most recent year is 13.6 or something like that.”

     Of course, even saying that, he's left a giant donut hole just like the one that the President's "cuts" to Medicare filled in 2010. While Romney-Ryan has been lying about Obama "stealing" form Medicare, in fact he closed up the major donut hole that Ryan along with his fellow Republicans opened with their costly Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit in 2003-the benefit of this has largely been to the pharmaceutical companies.

   This time Romney has opened a donut hole of a different kind. He said he paid 13% in taxes but not income taxes. So we don't know what he meant. The question is how much did he pay in income taxes. He and his wife Ann Romney-she sure did get testy in being asked that in her interview!-have only spoken of "taxes" and not "income taxes" so we don't know what he means.

   It's open to doubt that he has paid at least 13% in income taxes for the last 10 years. Even in 2009-after the big losses on Wall Street and all the deductions available for all the losses. And how much might Romney have brought back into the country after the government offered amnesty for tax havens in Switzerland?

  Has he paid at least 13% in income taxes? He may just have lied to the American people again. What he still doesn't get is that all these outraged denials on his and Ann's part aren't worth anything. We need proof of this. Every President since the 60s has released their tax returns. If Mitt Romney doesn't he simply won't even be considered by the American people. That's all.

   “Since there is substantial reason to doubt his claims, we have a simple message for him: Prove it,” Obama campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith said. “Even though he’s invested millions in foreign tax havens, offshore shell corporations and a Swiss bank account, he’s still asking the American people to trust him.”