Mitt's Tax Returns--He Earns as Much in a Week from Investments as the 1% Does in a Year

At long last, Mitt Romney's tax returns have arrived, and they reveal an income as breathtakingly high and bolstered by loopholes for the rich as was expected.

Romney earns as much in a week as the top 1% does in a year, and he's not working hard for the money. He's investing hard for it--in places like the Cayman Islands and Swiss bank accounts.

From Bloomberg:

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney earned $21.6 million in 2010 and paid 13.9 percent of that amount in income taxes, using the preferential rate on investment income and charitable deductions to pay a smaller share of his earnings than top wage earners typically do.

The former private-equity executive and Massachusetts governor earned more than half of his income from capital gains and dividends, which are taxed at a top rate of 15 percent, rather than the 35 percent top rate for ordinary income...“Oh, I’m sure people will talk about it,” Romney said during a debate in Tampa, Florida, last night. “I mean, you’ll see my income, how much taxes I’ve paid, how much I’ve paid to charity. You’ll see how complicated taxes can be.”

Romney’s income puts him near the very top of U.S. taxpayers. In 2008, according to the Internal Revenue Service, the median adjusted gross income was $33,048, which Romney made in less than a day. Reaching the top 1 percent of taxpayers required $380,354 in adjusted gross income, about Romney’s earnings in a week.

Or as the New York Times put it, he's in the top .006%, one of the wealthiest men in America. And the fact that he's not releasing previous years' returns indicates that there may have been 

But the sheer size of Mitt's moneypile isn't really the issue here, it's how little of that income he pays in taxes--compared to people in lower tax brackets and his own.

As Alex Seitz-Wald at ThinkProgress highlights in his rundown of facts about the Romney tax returns:

Romney paid a lower tax rate than many middle-class Americans: Romney’s returns reveal that he paid an effective tax rate of 13.9 percent, lower even than the low rate of 15 percent he estimated he paid last week. While this is far less than what many middle-class Americans pay, it’s also well below what wealthy people pay. The average effective tax rate for someone in Romney’s income bracket is 25 percent.

As bad as this all looks for Romney, it's great timing for Obama who is about to give his State of the Union address on this very issue. Notes Greg Sargent:

...all this comes as Obama is set to deliver a speech focused on extreme disparities of wealth, and on precisely the element of the tax code that enables his likely rival to pay a far lower rate than many middle class taxpayers — at a time of rising public preoccupation with inequality....

Romney doesn’t just disagree with Obama on these fundamental issues; he personally symbolizes virtually the entire 2012 Democratic message. He is the walking embodiment of everything Dems allege is wrong with our system and the ways it’s rigged in favor of the wealthy and against the middle class. Yet this is the standard bearer the GOP seems set to pick.

Go for it, GOP!