Mitt Romney's tax rate is somewhere near 15 percent — well below the 35 percent income tax rate for the highest earners.
Romney hasn't released the details yet, but the NYT reported last month that, as part of his retirement agreement with Bain Capital, Romney "has probably qualified for a lower tax rate than ordinary income under a tax provision favorable to hedge fund and private equity managers."
That tax provision applies to something called "carried interest." We discussed carried interest, and the controversy surrounding it, a while back. Here's a lightly edited excerpt from that post.
Read More: "some of the richest workers in the country ... pay tax on their labor at a low rate"
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/01/19/145449117/carried-interest-why-mitt-romneys-tax-rate-is-15-percent#more
