Why Harry Reid is a piece of Crap

From the Washington Times, an article titled,

Nevada Republican to Harry Reid: Make our day, release your 2011 tax return

Should Sen. Democratic leader Harry Reid follow in the footsteps of GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney by releasing his 2011 tax return?

Dave Buell, chairman of the Washoe Country Republican party in Mr. Reid's political backyard of Nevada, certainly thinks so.

"Senator, make our day and release your 2011 tax return," he said in an email blast Friday evening.
Citing an anonymous source, Mr. Reid has repeatedly claimed in recent weeks that Mr. Romney "didn't pay taxes for 10 years."

Mr. Romney countered that over the past ten years he never paid less than 13 percent of his taxable income and that "Harry Reid's charge is totally false."

For 2011, Romney gave 30% of his income to charity.  See the block below of the breakdown of Romney's 2011 tax return.

- In 2011, the Romneys paid $1,935,708 in taxes on $13,696,951 in mostly investment income.
- The Romneys’ effective tax rate for 2011 was 14.1%.
- The Romneys donated $4,020,772 to charity in 2011, amounting to nearly 30% of their income.
- The Romneys claimed a deduction for $2.25 million of those charitable contributions. The Romneys’ generous charitable donations in 2011 would have significantly reduced their tax obligation for the year. The Romneys thus limited their deduction of charitable contributions to conform to the Governor's statement in August, based upon the January estimate of income, that he paid at least 13% in income taxes in each of the last 10 years.

Vice President Joe Biden, by comparison, gave an average of $369 per year before people started noticing. I think he might have upped this to the low thousands, just to avoid people noting that his "heart" is not nearly as large as he claims.

Here's Romney's certified summary of his taxes for the past twenty years, as provided by the accounting firm of PriceWaterHouseCooper:

- In each year during the entire 20-year period, the Romneys owed both state and federal income taxes.
- Over the entire 20-year period, the average annual effective federal tax rate was 20.20%.
- Over the entire 20-year period, the lowest annual effective federal personal tax rate was 13.66%.
- Over the entire 20-year period, the Romneys gave to charity an average of 13.45% of their adjusted gross income.
- Over the entire 20-year period, the total federal and state taxes owed plus the total charitable donations deducted represented 38.49% of total AGI.
- During the 20-year period covered by the PWC letter, Gov. and Mrs. Romney paid 100 percent of the taxes that they owed.

Continuing the article from the Washing Times:

Shortly after Mr. Romney released the additional tax information, Mr. Buell blasted out the email calling for Mr. Reid to come clean and release hits tax records "so that all Nevadans can see that he is paying his fair share." He added, "In addition, Mr. Reid should explain to all of us how he became a millionaire on a bureaucrat's salary. Mitt Romney earned his money by investing in companies, people and creating jobs in the private sector while Harry Reid made his money by taking money from the private sector and redistributing it through government.