Excerpt of Remarks in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania

"And note that there are some differences in the campaign coming forward. Which is the President, our current president, is intent on raising tax rates, particularly for small business." — Mitt Romney

Remarks

Bethel Park, Pennsylvania

April 17, 2012

Click Here To Watch Mitt Romney Discuss President Obama's Tax-and-Spend Policies

MITT ROMNEY: "And note that there are some differences in the campaign coming forward. Which is the President, our current president, is intent on raising tax rates, particularly for small business. Most small businesses are taxed at the individual tax rate—meaning they don't pay a corporate tax, they pay individual tax rates and so he wants to raise the tax rates from 35 percent to 40 percent. That will impact a lot of small businesses and probably lead to some businesses having to lay people off. There's another tax that he has proposed, and that is now in law, which is the Obamacare tax, which is applied to companies that make medical devices and instruments and so forth. And that tax is about 2.3 percent of your sales—not of your profit, but of your sales. And so that's going to have a big impact on employers that are in the medical field, as you are. And then of course the Vice President the other day proposed another tax, which he said is a global tax on business. I'm not quite sure what that is, but that will surely cost jobs as well. And the President, of course, has been campaigning for something known as the Buffett Rule, the Buffett Tax. And I understand that was defeated in the Senate yesterday, so that's probably not going to happen, but not a tax that had much of an impact. As a matter of fact, someone calculated that that tax would raise enough revenue to pay for government for eleven hours. So it was more of a gimmick than it was a real proposal to reform our tax system and make life a little easier. My own plan is to lower the tax rates, but also limit some of the deductions and exemptions and breaks, particularly for high income folks, so we can continue to get the revenue we've been getting — when I say we, I'm talking about the government — but can do so in a tax structure that's simpler and with rates that are a little lower so that businesses can afford to hire and expand and people can have a little easier time making ends meet."