Could Romney’s Effective Tax Rate Really Be Zero? | TPMDC

Could Romney’s Effective Tax Rate Really Be Zero? | TPMDC:

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That’s according to Ed Kleinbard, a tax law professor at the USC School of Law who earlier this year participated in a conference call organized by the DNC. He thinks the literal reading of Reid’s allegation is unlikely.

“We know that by 2010, he had lots of other income,” Kleinbard said. “[H]e had something like $20 million in other income…. What [the TPM reader] wrote is may be true but it has nothing to do with the $20 million on the return in 2010.”

That year, Romney paid a nearly 14 percent effective rate on his taxes. But those numbers likely understate the degree to which Romney’s financial circumstances improved that year. It wouldn’t account for the appreciation of assets he decided not to sell in 2010, and if Bain bought company shares back from Romney’s IRA, that money wouldn’t show up anywhere.

“What’s in the IRA is invisible on the return,” Kleinbard says.

Other experts largely agree.