Misleading Obama Claims About Romney's Effective Tax

Obama keeps claiming that most people pay more taxes than Romney does.  Actually, Romney's 14.1% effective tax rate is higher than that of 97% of Americans.  It is probably very similar to Obama's own effective tax rate, so Obama is being quite the hypocrite.  But Obama will make any claim if he thinks he can take advantage of people not thinking things through.

When pressed, Obama will claim that he is right because he will say the average person pays Social Security and Medicare taxes at such a high rate that their effective tax rate is higher than Romney's is.  This is perhaps true, since most of Romney's income exceeds the upper limit on income taxed by these payroll taxes.  But, these taxes are supposed to be rather like insurance premiums, or at least that is what Democrats have always told us.  It is not clear that they should be compared to income taxes.

If you insist on counting the Social Security and Medicare taxes, not reported on any 1040 tax forms, one might just as well include real estate taxes also.  I am sure that very few of Obama's average tax payers pay anywhere near as much real estate tax as Romney does.  In any case, Obama's claims that it is unfair that Romney does not pay a higher effective tax rate also ignores the fact that most of Romney's income is due to dividends and capital gains.  Consequently, this form of income is what is left after a corporation pays corporate income taxes.

You really have to hunt for a very peculiar viewpoint to make the claim that Romney does not pay his fair share of taxes.