Mitt Romney just got caught talking about 47 percent of Americans behind their backs.
The GOP presidential hopeful was captured in a video taken at a closed-door fundraiser attended by some 30 wealthy voters attacking âthe 47 percent of people who will vote for the president no matter whatââthe group (actually 46.4 percent of Americans) that doesnât pay income tax. These are people who âbelieve they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it,â he says. âIâll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.â
So who exactly are these people âwho believe the government has a responsibility to care for them?â Here, seven noteworthy facts about the 47 percent.
Most are taxpayersâŚThe dangerous misconception of the 47 percent argument, according to Kevin Roose writing in New York magazine, Daily Kosâs Jed Lewison, and the Washington Postâs Brad Plummer, is that it is too often misinterpreted to mean that 47 percent of households pay no taxes at all, that theyâre freeloaders. But the truth is that only 18.1 percent of households pay no taxâtwo thirds of the households that pay no income tax still pay payroll tax. (Many, says Plummer, actually pay it at higher rates than Romney.)
âŚAnd future income tax payers As Matthew Schmitz points out at First Things, in addition to most of the 47 percenters paying sales tax, property tax, and payroll tax, most of them also will begin paying income taxâthe very thing Romney blasts them for not payingâwithin two years.
Many are elderlyJust over 10 percent of those paying no federal income tax are retired or elderly, according to the Tax Policy Center. As Roose at New York magazine points out, Social Security benefits arenât considered taxable income, so if most or all of an elderly personâs income is from Social Security, he or she has no income tax to pay. âRomney is conflating the people who pay no net income tax with the people so dependent on government aid that they have to vote for Obama,â says David Weigel at Slate. âBut these arenât the same people!â In fact, elderly voters voted heavily Republican in the 2010 elections.

Many are poorOf the 47 percent of households that pay no income tax, nearly two thirds still pay payroll tax. Just about one third of those remaining householdsâthe ones who pay neither income nor payroll taxâare the very poor, earning less than $20,000 each year. Those who in that lowest of income brackets pay no income tax through a combination of tax creditsâspecifically the earned income tax credit and the child creditâthat, once applied, reduce their taxable income to zero, according to Tax Policy Center.
âŚThough a few are richWhile a majority of those who donât pay income tax donât do so because they are either elderly or donât earn enough, there are âsome exceptions to the old-or-poor rule,â says Roose. One big, rich exception: the roughly 3,000 members of the top 0.1 percent of taxpayersâthey earned more than $2,178,866 in 2011âwho paid no federal income tax because they were hedge-fund managers, real-estate investors, or wealthy financiers whose income is derived from capital gains, which are taxed at very low levels. When that rate is combined with a concept called âtax-loss carryforward,â which Roose says âallows an investor to use last yearâs big loss to offset this yearâs gains for tax purposes,â these top earners donât have to pay federal income tax.
Many hail from conservative states Romney argues that the 47 percent heâs referring to in his sound bite will always vote for Obama, but, according to David A. Graham at The Atlantic, a disproportionate amount of those people actually reside in red statesâwhich typically vote for Republican candidates. Of the 10 states with the highest percentage of people who pay no income tax, nine are red states.
Some are young people and students Accoring to The Hamilton Project, the 47 percent figure also wrongly includes younger individuals in their late teens and early 20s, many of whom are either unemployed or in school, and therefore have no tax liability. In recent years, as college graduates have struggled to find work, some of them are going back to graduate school, which the Project says has caused the number of young people who donât pay taxes to rise.