His taxes, revealed

Mitt Romney’s newly released tax returns remind us that tax strategy isn’t what makes you wealthy, it’s having a lot of money that makes you wealthy. (AP image)

Over the weekend, as promised, Mitt Romney released his 2011 return. So now we have the 2011 return, the 2010 return, and in addition, as a bonus, he released a certified statement covering the previous 20 years.

Finally-the tax tips we’ve all been waiting for.

And it turns out that he does have money parked in the Cayman Islands.

However, according to the campaign, the money he makes there is taxed exactly the same as the money he makes in this country.

So if that’s true, what’s his secret tax-cutting strategy?

Number one, the low tax rate on investment income-which we already knew, and number two, giving money away.

$4 million to charity last year-about 30 percent of his income. But he only claimed a partial deduction to keep his tax rate from dropping too low. Talk about a Boy Scout.

And as for the previous 20 years, there was no single year when he paid less than 13 percent. So it looks like Harry Reid’s implication that he might have paid zero was just so much hot air.

And again the way he did it was to give, on average, more than 13 percent to charity each year. So there it is. His strategy is to give it away.

It’s somewhat unsatisfying. Because he could give away fifty percent or even 90% and still have more money than most of us.

It reminds us that tax strategy isn’t what makes you wealthy. It’s having a lot of money that makes you wealthy. And the way to have a lot of money is to either save a lot, or invent the iPhone.