Mitt Romney: It's fair I pay a lower tax rate than people making $50,000

[SickOfTheOnePct]

44. Who said they didn't pay taxes?

I said that 47% don't pay federal income taxes, and that is true.

You don't know what's in his effective tax rate? Well, seeing as it's from his federal 1040, it would be federal income tax, including capital gains taxes. Not Social Security taxes, not Medicare taxes, not state incomes taxes.

You're correct in that we don't know what he paid prior to 2010, but we do know what he paid in 2010 and 2011, because he has released those returns.

And if you don't believe me that 47% don't pay federal income tax, perhaps you'll believe the Center for Budget Policy & Priorities:

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3505

Close to half of U.S. households currently do not owe federal income tax. The Urban Institute-Brookings Tax Policy Center estimates that 46 percent of households will owe no federal income tax for 2011. [1] A widely cited figure is a Joint Committee on Taxation estimate that 51 percent of households paid no federal income tax in 2009.[2] (The TPC figure for 2009 also is 51 percent.)

That doesn't mean they don't pay any federal taxes, it just means they don't pay any federal income taxes. When all federal taxes are added up, there is no doubt that someone making $50,000 pays a higher percentage in federal taxes than Romney does, but the 60 Minutes question was specifically about the 14.!% effective federal income tax rate, not the overall federal tax rate. And the premise was false, as I've proven using the IRS tax tables.