Obama win could cost Romney $5 million in personal taxes

WASHINGTON – To see where the presidential candidates stand on taxing the rich, just look at how they’d tax themselves. Under his own proposal, Mitt Romney would pay half what he would under President Barack Obama’s tax plan.

For a man of Romney’s means, that could save almost $5 million a year.

For Obama, not as wealthy as Romney but still well-off, losing re-election could provide a tax windfall. He’d save as much as $90,000 a year if Romney’s plan were enacted rather than his own tax-the-rich vision.

Whether they go up or down, the candidates’ personal tax bills won’t make a dent in the nation’s trillion dollar annual deficits. But they illustrate a sticking point in the struggle to fix the nation’s finances: Just how much should affluent Americans pony up?

Obama’s plan would hit couples making more than $250,000 per year from several directions, raising their tax rate, dunning them more for investment income and limiting their tax deductions. People such as Romney with earnings from private equity management would lose a big tax break. And Obama would establish a rule, named after billionaire Warren Buffett, to ensure households taking in more than $1 million a year pay at least 30 percent in taxes.

Obama’s health care law, already in place, also raises Medicare taxes on the wealthy, especially big investors, starting in 2013. That could cost Romney more than $800,000.

None of this would come close to balancing the budget, but it could add billions of dollars per year to help reduce the deficit.

Romney wants to lower current tax rates for everyone by 20 percent. This benefits the wealthy most: Dropping the highest bracket from 35 percent to 28 percent, for example, yields a much bigger savings for those at the top than lowering the 15 percent bracket to 12 percent brings for taxpayers in that group.

Romney also would eliminate the alternative minimum tax, which hits the rich and some middle-class taxpayers. He wants to repeal Obama’s health care law and its taxes. Romney would pair his tax cuts with huge spending reductions eventually reaching $500 billion per year.

To help offset the government’s losses from lower rates, Romney says he would end some tax breaks. But he hasn’t said which ones, so it’s impossible to calculate the effect.