Josh Barro, Columnist

The Real Reason Romney’s Tax Math Doesn't Add Up

October 10, 2012 at 4:25 PM UTC

Josh Barro is the lead writer for the Ticker, Bloomberg View's blog on economics, finance and politics. His primary areas of interest include tax and fiscal policy, state and local government, and planning and land use. Previously, Barro was a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and a commercial real estate banker at Wells Fargo. He holds a bachelor's degree in psychology from Harvard and lives in Queens, New York.

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Mitt Romney’s tax plan has three key planks. He cuts personal income taxrates by 20 percent across the board; he eliminates deductions, exclusions andcredits so that the deficit does not grow; and he doesn’t make the tax code anyless progressive. Unfortunately, as the Tax Policy Center has shown, only two ofthese planks can co-exist.

Conservatives have reacted aggressively against the TPC report. It seems thatMitt’s plan should be viable: If you cut tax rates proportionally across theboard, and eliminate tax deductions proportionally, it seems progressivityshould be unchanged. In fact, if you eliminate tax breaks starting with thewealthy, as Romney says he would, it seems he should be able to make the taxcode even more progressive.