By Claudine Zap, Yahoo!
News flash: Mitt Romney is way richer than you. How rich? A very cool -- if incredibly maddening tool -- can tell you exactly how long it takes for Richie Romney to make your salary (hint: not very long). Based on the presidential candidate's 2010 tax return, on a $40,000 annual income, the Slate calculator tells us: "Mitt Romney made $40,000 in 16 hours 10 minutes and 34 seconds."
After facing growing criticism by his Republican competitors, and taking a drubbing in the South Carolina primary, the Republican candidate finally released his 2010 and 2011 taxes. Voters were again reminded of the great divide between wealth and regular working stiffs: Romney earned about $21.6 million in 2010 and estimates about the same for 2011.
Mitt proved after releasing his tax information that his rate is, as he had estimated, "probably closer to the fifteen per cent rate than anything."
How is that possible? Easy: The very legal and very low capital gains tax. Romney, a former head of Bain Capital, has been living off investment profits, which unlike wages from a paycheck, are taxed at the lower 15 percent rate -- instead of the 35 percent that wealthy Americans pay on earned income.
Mitt's riches gave searches on the term "capital gains tax" a one-day jump of 50%, along with lookups on "what is capital gains tax," "capital gains tax rate" and "history of capital gains tax."
John Cassidy in the New Yorker points out that it was Bill Clinton who first cut the capital gains tax from 28 percent to 20 percent. George W. Bush slashed it down to 15 percent -- where it remains today.
Maybe it's not surprising that Romney was reluctant to release his tax statements. The New York Times reports that the Republican is the wealthiest candidate to ever run for president, with an estimated family fortune of $190 million to $250 million.
Forbes called Romney's admission of his super-low tax rate a "teachable moment," adding that keeping the investment income tax low allows for a "ginormous loophole" -- tax shelters to convert fully taxed income into capital gains. "If you can transform $10 million of wages into gains, you can save over $2 million."
However, as NPR reporter Tamara Keith pointed out in an analysis of the Newt Gingrich proposed tax plan, Romney would pay zero percent on taxes: The former House Speaker calls for a 15 percent flat tax that everyone could choose on earned income, and no tax on capital gains.
Much of Romney's income comes from Bain, made through private equity deals, and is taxed at the lower capital gains rate. And even at the current rate of 15 percent, that sweet deal could be a hard for ordinary tax payers to swallow.
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