Romney’s Tax Hikes (Mitt is masquerading as a free-marketeer)

National Review ^ | 01/09/2012 | Deroy Murdock

[SeekAndFind]

Hot on the heels of his eight-vote Iowa-caucus landslide, Willard Mitt Romney is crisscrossing New Hampshire before Tuesday’s key primary. Romney is masquerading as a limited-government, free-market executive from next-door Massachusetts. From the Golden Gate to the Granite State, voters should greet Romney’s impersonation with a quarryful of skepticism.

In fact, Romney increased taxes by $309 million, mainly on corporations. These tax hikes, described by Romney apologists as “loophole closures,” totaled $128 million in 2003, $95.5 million in 2004, and $85 million in 2005. That final year, Romney proposed $170 million in higher business taxes, the Boston Globe reports. However, the Bay State’s liberal, Democratic legislature balked and approved only the less onerous $85 million increase.

“Tax rates on many corporations almost doubled because of legislation supported by Romney,” Peter Nicholas, chairman of Boston Science Corporation, explained in the Jan. 6, 2008, Boston Herald. “His portrayal of himself as a reliable tax cutter,” Nicholas added, “is undercut by the facts.” Also, Romney raised the tax — from 5.3 to 9.8 percent — on subchapter S corporations owned by business trusts. Nicholas called this 85 percent tax hike “an important disincentive to investment, growth, and job creation.” Joseph Crosby of the Council on State Taxation observed, “Romney went further than any other governor in trying to wring money out of corporations.”

Romney also imposed an additional $432 million in fees for state services by creating new fees or increasing existing ones. He was not dragooned into this by greedy Democratic lawmakers; Romney himself proposed these items. In 2003 alone, Romney concocted or boosted 88 such fees. He charged more money for marriage licenses (from $6 to $12), gun registrations (from $25 to $75), gasoline deliveries ($60 million), real-estate transfers ($175 million), and lots more. Particularly obnoxious was Romney’s $10 fee per Certificate of Blindness. Romney also billed blind people $15 each for discount-travel ID cards.

While Romney can take credit for a $275 million capital-gains-tax rebate, property-tax relief for seniors, and a two-day tax-free shopping holiday, he also must take responsibility for $740.5 million in higher taxes, plus that $85 million in business taxes that he requested and the legislators rejected.

“Romney did not even fight higher death-tax rates,” notes Steve Baldwin, former minority whip of the California state Assembly.“When the legislature considered this issue, Romney’s official position was ‘no position.’ This echoed Barack Obama’s ‘present’ votes in the Illinois state Senate.”

As Romney siphoned his constituents’ pockets, the Milken Institute’s Cost of Doing Business Index used 2006 data to rate Massachusetts as America’s fourth-costliest state in which to practice free enterprise. The Tax Foundation dropped Massachusetts from America’s 29th-most-business-friendly state to No. 36. The Tax Foundation also calculated that, under Romney, the per-capita tax burden in Massachusetts increased from 9.3 to 9.9 percent. In real dollars, the Romney-era per-capita tax burden grew by $1,175.71.

As if impoverishing his own citizens were not bad enough, Romney’s March 5, 2003, signature raised taxes on non-residents retroactive to January 1 of that year. Perpetrating taxation without representation, Romney’s law declared that “gross income derived from … any trade or business, including any employment,” would be taxable, “regardless of the taxpayer’s residence or domicile in the year it is received.” Consequently, according to data furnished by the Massachusetts Department of Revenue, between 2003 and 2006, New Hampshire residents who worked or did business in the Bay State shipped Massachusetts $95 million above what they would have paid if Romney hadn’t signed the new law. The average tax paid by New Hampshirites into Massachusetts grew by $458 — from $2,392 in 2002 to $2,850 in 2006 — up 19.1 percent.

Notwithstanding the higher taxes and fees that Romney himself advocated, he claims that he was the powerless victim of a left-wing legislature. Nonsense. The profusion of Democrats on Beacon Hill did not prevent Romney’s GOP predecessors from dramatically cutting taxes. Former Republican governors William Weld and Paul Cellucci signed more than 40 tax-cut bills while Democrats ran the state legislature.

Romney seems stuck at 25 percent support among Republicans. That’s because 75 percent of GOP voters simply don’t trust him. There are at least 740.5 million reasons not to trust Romney on taxes, either.

— New York commentator Deroy Murdock is a nationally syndicated columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.

[Donkey Odious]

“Em-eye-teetee...Rom-n-eee...”

Oh....MARKET-eer....nevermind.

[ken5050]

There is a civil war going on inside National Review over ther endorsement of Mittens. Depending on how the election goes, it could well effect the magazine..how influential it is in the future..

[Diogenesis]

RomneyBOTs in NH WANT more taxes.
And they deserve them.

FACTOID OF THE DAY:

Bad Gov. Romney, in another of his “hit and runs”
managed to even raise taxes on New Hampshire residents
while Gov. of Massachusetts.
Believe it or not.

[92nina]

Your point is a good one, and I love your tagline.

[Peter from Rutland]

The article is wrong. FID cards went from $25 to $100. The original ones never expired. The new ones expire in 4 years.

So instead of paying $25 once, you pay $100 every four years.

Thanks Mittens!