Romney's Taxes

I'm sure that you all saw that Romney was challenged directly at that last GOP debate about his tax returns. It was all kinds of awesome. For details on the exchange, check out the Washington Monthly's post. In short, Romney stumbled his way to the following: 1) he admitted that his effective tax rate last year was about 15 percent, 2) that he will release his 2011 return in April when he files it, and 3) that while most of his income comes from investments and such piled up at Bain, he does get "speaker's fees from time to time, but not very much."

Let's look at those points individually. First, as you can see here, his effective tax rate is equal to that paid by people who make somewhere in the neighborhood of $50,000 to $74,000 a year. I'm not positive but I think most people in that bracket have fewer than Romney's 11 homes.

Second, the timing and depth of his promise is already coming under attack because it's so weak. Check out Matt Lauer's exchange with Chris Christie, who has been a Romney stalwart but seems to have found himself unable to defend this. Bottom line: Romney's promising to release less than other candidates have done and everyone sees through the fact that he's only willing to release them after the GOP primaries are done.

Finally, we come to Romney's "not very much" income gained through speaking fees. Conservatively, Romney made an estimated $362,000 in speaking fees in 2011. Not very much indeed.

This issue definitely has legs and Romney knows it (but not enough to talk about $362,000 without acknowledging that very few Americans make that much in a year). This is going to get better and better.