Presidential Candidate Who Refuses To Release Tax Returns Disses Those Not Paying Fed Income Tax

So, now we have it.  The secret tape of Romney speaking to a bunch of wealthy donors in which he says that those supporting Obama include a base of the 47% of "deadbeats" who pay on federal income tax, while he continues to refuse to release all but his most recent tax returns.  Needless to say, he forgot to mention that most of those people are paying fica, state sales taxes, and a lot of other taxes as well.  Indeed, when one looks at the total tax system of local, state, and federal, it is only barely progressive, and goes regressive at the very top end due to there being no increase in the amount of fica someone pays beyond a wage income a bit above $100,000, while even the poorest wage earner pays at the same rate.  Fica remains the largest tax paid by a strong majority of the population, but somehow Romney thinks those paying fica but not federal income tax are "deadbeats."

To keep things in perspective, the rich whiners who keep talking about only the federal income tax cite the large proportion of federal income tax the top 20% of earners pay, when one takes all taxes into account, they barely pay more than the share of income they earn, 61% to 59%.