Screwed six ways to Sunday: Paying Zero Taxes Edition. [View all]

[bleever]

As I listen to Republicans' outrage -- OUTRAGE! -- that Harry Reid would accuse Mitt Romney of paying zero taxes, it's clear that "paying zero taxes" has now been successfully defined in the public sphere as an Awful, Terrible Thing that no one should be accused of.

In fact, there could be good reasons that someone doesn't pay income taxes in a given year. Even wealthy people, under benign circumstances where their net worth contracts for one reason or another, might have an obligation of zero.

But instead of being able to say, "Sure, I paid no taxes in years X and Y, because of various losses in investment value and income, while other years I a paid pretty big sums", by virtue of the Republican outrage "paying no taxes" is defined as something criminal.


I'm very confident that Harry Reid didn't make this up, that Mitt really had years with a zero tax obligation, and that now he has nowhere to go.