Tax experts — including one who supports Romney’s plan — say the Republican presidential candidate’s promise to cut individual income tax rates without either favoring the wealthy or losing revenue isn’t mathematically possible. That’s the conclusion of the Tax Policy Center in a report the Romney campaign attacked …
A new ad from the Obama campaign claims that Mitt Romney “paid only 14 percent in taxes—probably less than you.” That depends. Romney paid a federal income tax rate that is higher than the income tax rate paid by 97 percent of tax filers. But if you include a combination of income taxes and payroll taxes — which make up the bulk of federal taxes for most taxpayers — the ad is accurate.
The ad, called “Stretch,”
A Republican talking point falsely claims that the Congressional Budget Office found 75 percent of the federal health care law’s taxes would be paid by those earning less than $120,000 a year. CBO didn’t say that. Instead, it found 76 percent of those paying the mandate penalty would earn under that amount.
For more on this claim, see “Twisting Health Care Taxes,” our July 23 item.
Critics of the health care law have claimed that it’s the biggest tax increase in history. But that could only be true in raw dollars. When adjusted for inflation — or better yet, as a percentage of gross domestic product — several other tax increases just since 1968 are larger.
For a fuller explanation, see our July 10 Ask FactCheck, “Biggest Tax Increase in History?“
Republicans are twisting the facts on taxes in the Affordable Care Act, grossly overstating the impact on families or lower-income earners.
In what has become a Republican talking point, several GOP lawmakers have wrongly claimed that a Congressional Budget Office report said that 75 percent of the federal health care law’s taxes would be paid by those earning less than $120,000 a year. That’s not what the CBO said. It found that 76 percent of those who would pay the penalty for not having insurance in 2016 would earn under $120,000.
Thomas Hobbes’ oft-cited phrase from 1651, “nasty, brutish and short,” does not describe the 2012 presidential campaign — unfortunately. The contest so far has been nasty all right, and disregard for the truth has been brutish on both sides, in our judgment. But alas, it won’t be over until Nov …
Politicians talk about the burden of taxes incessantly. Now comes a rare chance to check the facts. And the fact is that federal tax rates had fallen to the lowest in 30 years when President Barack Obama took office — and fell again in his first year in office.
This news comes from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which just issued the latest update of its invaluable series on “Distribution of Household Income and Federal Taxes,”
Q: Is the new health care law “the biggest tax increase in history”?
A: In raw dollars, perhaps. But several tax increases just since 1968 were larger as percentages of the economy, or in inflation-adjusted dollars.
An ad from the Obama campaign exaggerates the truth about fees and tax hikes imposed by Mitt Romney when he was governor of Massachusetts.
It lists numerous fees hiked by Romney, but we found that a number of them are misleading — seeming to be more far-reaching and broad than they really are.
The ad also repeats a misleading claim about Romney cutting taxes “on millionaires like himself,” and botches the figure for the revenue gained by Romney imposing higher fees and closing corporate tax loopholes.
It didn’t take long for the governor’s race in North Carolina to turn ugly. Although it’s only June, Republican Pat McCrory and Democrat Walter Dalton both find themselves under attack from outside groups spending heavily on misleading TV ads:
A Democratic group claims McCrory, a former mayor of Charlotte, “used his position as mayor to lobby state government for millions in tax breaks” for a company that paid him “over $140,000 to sit on its board.”