WASHINGTON – Good luck figuring out whether Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney would cut or raise your taxes if he's elected president. President Barack Obama promises tax reform, too, but precious little detail.

Unlike Romney, Obama wants to make sure any tax reform produces a big new chunk of revenue to address the deficit. Yet it's difficult to do that and not hit the middle class. It's Romney's far more ambitious tax plan, however, that has become front and center in the presidential campaign.

Romney promises a 20 percent cut in tax rates, but he won't say which deductions he'll kill to pay for it. He promises a wholesale rewrite of the tax code that would cut income tax rates across the board, taking the top rate from 35 percent to 28 percent.