Romney IS Like Reagan

Rick Perlstein, putting his research for a Reagan book to good use:

Brazen stuff. For one thing, Gov. Reagan pulled his tax dodge during an election year, when he was running for a second term. For another, his big crusade after reelection was fighting the Democratic legislature’s attempts to institute tax withholding on salaries to make up for a budget shortfall. He wanted people should know exactly what they were paying; "taxes should hurt," was his slogan.

The following week, the story was the talk of the State Capitol. At Reagan's weekly press conference, after he announced the state was running so short of cash that by fall it would be forced, for the first time since the Great Depression, to rely on outside borrowing to pay the bills – because, of course, Democrats were "playing fast and loose with the fiscal integrity of this state for purely partisan advantage" – a newsman asked him if it was true that he himself had contributed nothing to state coffers the previous year. Obviously taken aback, he responded slowly: "You know something? I don't actually know whether I did or not. I'd have to check up .... I have a fellow making it our for me — a lawyer makes it out." He added, "I know in the federal the last couple of years I got a rebate back."

Five minutes after the press conference his office released a one-sentence statement: "Because of business reverses of Gov. Reagan's investments, he owed no state income tax for 1970."

Well. The UPI wire service did the accounting. It turned out that, in addition to his $41,100 salary as governor, for which a Californian would ordinarily owe $2,700 without deductions, Reagan had sold 236 acres of his Yearling Row Ranch in the Malibu Mountains in 1968 to 20th Century Fox studios for a reported $1.93 million. (To figure these sums in current dollars, multiply by a factor of about 5.5). He refused to say how this all added up to an absence of taxable income. He also refused to make his tax records public, or say what the "business reversals" were – refused with a vengeance. Arriving at the Capitol the next day, asked whether he would clarify his federal tax status, he answered, "Why should I have to clarify the status? Frankly, I think the Capitol press corps demeaned itself a little by engaging in invasion of privacy." (Turn the question around, playing the victim card against the wicked jackals of the press: Newt Gingrich would absorb the lesson well.)

That's pretty funny.  I have to say, I ended up paying very little in taxes last year, because I bought out grandpa's share of the farm partnership, and he got all 2010 income, and I got all the expenses for 2011.  Of course, that will only work for last year.  This year I'm going to be hammered.  So it goes.