Romney Tax Plan Would Soak the 'Ordinary Rich'

Only the top 1% of the top 1% would benefit
By Liam Carnahan,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 8, 2012 4:44 PM CDT
Romney Tax Plan Would Soak the 'Ordinary Rich'
Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney gets out of his vehicle before he boards his campaign plane in Orlando, Fla., Sunday, Oct. 7, 2012.   (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

MItt Romney assures us that his tax plan won't reduce the tax burden on the rich, but that claim leaves out a little-known divide between the wealthy and the super wealthy, writes David Frum at the Daily Beast. He says Romney's plan to make cuts in the top income-tax rate would be a boon for the richest of the rich, while the closing of loopholes and deductions would force the "ordinary rich" to pay the difference. In other words, "Romney would transfer the tax burden from the plutocrats to the orthodontists."

Romney's plan would cut taxes for those who make at least $500,000 in taxable income per year, while effectively raising taxes for those reporting $100,000 to $300,000 per year. The latter group may consider themselves the middle class, but Frum says they're more like the "lower upper class." America doesn't resent the successful, he writes, but "sometimes it seems that the very most successful resent everybody else—starting first with the people occupying the rungs of the ladder immediately below their own." (More Mitt Romney 2012 stories.)

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