Romney Camp Saddened $100,000,000 Retirement Fund To Be Taxed At Rate Paid By Plebes
Hey, Mittster, why the long face? What? Your retirement account holding somewhere between $21 and $100 million will be taxed at the same 35 percent rate the rest of us pay, instead of the 15 percent rate for "job creators"? THOSE FUCKERS! How do you even live??? ThinkProgress noted this peach of a story in The Wall Street Journal, which is mostly about funny ways Bain Capital made like 500 percent gains on its employees' IRAs or something, so what who cayuhs, but it does also have this golden nugget:
One news item, cited approvingly on Mr. Fleischer's blog, said Mr. Romney didn't appear to be engaged in an aggressive strategy to use charitable contributions of stock to lower his taxes. Mr. Romney gave $4 million to charity last year, exceeding his tax bill.
Yeah, haha, we almost forgot that Romney is paying $6 million in taxes on $45 million in income (that's two years' worth). Don't know why we would forget something like that; it's not like he doesn't keep trying to remind us. Anyhoo, learn something about real sadness, in the form of Romney's IRA tax problem, after the jump!
Documents analyzed by the Journal show that Mr. Romney co-invested in Bain deals via his IRA, although they don't show whether he used the special share class to direct more of his gains into the tax-deferred account.
In any case, swelling the IRA to the size Mr. Romney's reached has "created a tax problem" for the former Massachusetts governor, said a Romney campaign official. Tax-law changes since Mr. Romney's Bain tenure mean that long-term capital gains in regular accounts now are taxed at 15%. But IRA gains are taxed at ordinary-income rates upon withdrawal, which for Mr. Romney, under current law, would be 35%.
"Who wants to have $100 million in an IRA?" said the campaign official.
Who indeed? More importantly, will Mittens FIRE whomever forgot to let him pay less than half of what your friends and neighbors do? We got a fin says "yes."
[ Wall Street Journal, via ThinkProgress ]
Two words: Bain Capital
I actually saw an explanation of this. The details caused my eyes to cross, but approximately: It&#039;s a tax dodge for rich people (I know <i>that&#039;s</i> a surprise) by which he was able to contribute stock -- maybe it was his Bain stock -- to the IRA, but to report the contributed value as being absurdly low (like, under the contribution limits). I&#039;m not sure, but I think maybe this can be done because there is no obvious market value for not-publicly traded stock. Or maybe it&#039;s just a rich-guy giveaway.
Anyhow, the good news for Rmoney is that once the goodies are in the IRA, any further value growth, or selling the stock for cash, or whatever, is tax-deferred. The potential bad news is that if he withdraws money from the IRA, it&#039;s taxed as ordinary income. I&#039;m guessing that the reason for having so fucking much in the IRA is an attempt to get around the estate tax.