The across-the-board 20% tax cut that Mitt Romney has laid out would not only benefit the wealthy but also raise taxes on 95% of Americans, a new study from Brookings Institution and Tax Policy found.
The average tax increase for those making less than $200,000 a year would be $500, not to mention the billions of dollars in lost tax revenue.
The authors of the report were careful to say their analysis is based aspects of Romney's tax plan but they could not "score Governor Romney’s plan directly, as certain components of his plan are not specified in sufficient detail, nor do we make assumptions regarding what those components might be."
Talking Points Memo's Benjy Sarlin has more:
Romney has not said which tax breaks he would end to finance his plan, but he has suggested that he would only look to breaks that benefit the wealthy. The report concluded that notion is a fantasy no matter how it’s constructed: There simply are too many middle class tax breaks on the table to avoid skewing the burden against the average American.“Even if tax expenditures are eliminated in a way designed to make the resulting tax system as progressive as possible, there would still be a shift in the tax burden of roughly $86 billion from those making over $200,000 to those making less than that amount,” the report reads.