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Comment by ktsmith | Hacker News Reader

I was wondering how these numbers were possibly calculated given how little the Romney campaign has actually detailed about any of his "plans" including those for taxes. Everything his campaign has talked about seems very ambiguous.

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Repeated from below: The key assumption in Obama's infographic is that "Romney eliminates all tax benefits, except those for savings and investment". To the best of our knowledge, Romney has only indicated that he will cut the expanded refundability of the Child-Tax Credit, and the earned income tax credit (EITC) - which our analysis includes. Our analysis is based on the publicly available information on their respective plans. We make no 'assumptions' to fill in gaps.

We note though that the Romney plan does not address how his proposal will be funded and reference the $2.8 Trillion revenue shortfall his plan creates.

He's specifically said the shortfall will be made up with income taxes though. You're giving him a free pass by not building those dollars into the model somehow.

Understood. As there is no reliable way to guess at who would be affected and how (ie what income levels, with dependents / or without) - we believe the most accurate way to portray the plan is with what Romney has stated publicly and the shortfall that he needs to account for (ie $2.8 trillion over 10 years).

Unfortunately the $2.85 trillion shortfall is mentioned near the very end of the infographic and so a significant number of people are never going to see it and will just go "oh, the Romney plan would save me $X" without ever understanding the bigger picture.

Romney should clearly double his claimed tax cuts, will look great. Fuck that, the optimal strategy is clearly 100% tax cuts for everyone. [1]

Also: bunnies for everyone.

[1] Your local Somali-style warlord may confiscate your family, life and property at his discretion however.

the Romney plan does not address how his proposal will be funded and reference the $2.8 Trillion revenue shortfall his plan creates.

When the plan is advertised as "revenue-neutral" yet does not detail how the $2.8 trillion shortfall will be made up, it's ridiculous to give that plan a serious treatment.

It seems highly unfair to compare an ambiguous plan (Romney's) where the only known details are the ones that make the plan look good to a more completely detailed plan (Obama's).

You actually make a huge assumption - that somehow the $2.8 Trillion shortfall is going to be addressed without altering the numbers you are reporting. At least put a prominent error bar on the Romney side of the graphic, showing the potential range of extra taxes that must occur somewhere in the Romney plan.

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