Romney says 2 years of tax returns are good enough for us but not enough for him.

Quote from Hawk2007 : Sure, they're "income", but not subject to the marginal tax rates we pay for those drawing income checks from jobs. I hope that Romney and Ryan do eliminate capital gains taxes since a lot of it is double-taxation. If you, travfar, earn $100 from a job, you pay federal income tax on that. If you're in the upper-class, you take home $65. So, travfar, you decide to buy 3 (roughly) shares of facebook stock which closed around $20 today. Say, Facebook does super-awesome and blows every expectation out of the water and is trading for $100 per share in 2 years. Well, suddenly your $60 investment is now worth $300 and the federal government wants to tax you another 15% on your gain of $240 even though you already paid federal income taxes on the first $60. Also, this is despite you taking upon yourself to invest in the American economy in an American company rather than just buying a new pair of Air Jordans. What you and I are talking about is above the heads of most people. I'm not trying to belittle your intelligence, but I do belittle the intelligence of any liberal that think capital gains taxes should be raised higher.

Dude, first off, I would never buy facebook at $20 today. Especially when it closed just shy of $19. Trust me, I know plenty about tax on capital gains and dividends. Let's just say that my return and Romney's share some things in common. Not least of which is that they are both phonebook like. Mainly because of the Sched D.

As for "If you, travfar, earn $100 from a job, you pay federal income tax on that. If you're in the upper-class, you take home $65." That's a gross simplification. I would not be taking home $65. You're leaving out a bunch of other taxes like OASDI. You are also leaving out the 401K deduction. Only a fool doesn't max that out.

During my big earning years, I paid a lot of tax. And I mean a lot of tax. I wished I paid as little as Ryan's return say he did. Well... maybe not. Since I could have paid less tax. But my attitude during those years was that the government needed it more than I did. I once had a talk with a businessman in Denmark. He was complaining about how much tax he paid versus an American. We compared numbers and I topped out over him percentage wise. He got free healthcare and a free education. I got ....