Josh Barro, Columnist

Romney's Worst Tax Secret

August 3, 2012 at 5:26 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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We can debate whether Mitt Romney should have to disclose more about his personal finances. The tax secret Romney can't justify keeping is the detail of his plan to reform the tax code.

Mitt Romney's tax plan is specific in some areas: he'll cut earned income tax rates by 20 percent across the board. But it's vague in others: Romney says he'll pay for rate cuts by broadening the tax base, but he won't say how.