That Mitt Romney's tax plan delivers a windfall for the wealthy and boosts the burden on lower income families while piling up trillions in new debt should come as no surprise. After all, that's true of every contender in the GOP presidential race. Which means that Mitt Romney, the $250 million man who already pays Uncle Sam less than most middle class families, will win even if he loses. By slashing upper income tax rates, ending the estate tax and eliminating the capital gains tax, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry and most of all Newt Gingrich would give their hated rival from Massachusetts a multi-million dollar payday every year.

To be sure, Mitt Romney's already low tax bill (and especially that of his heirs) will go down if he is elected President. Romney would make the Bush tax cuts permanent and so keep the top rate at 35 percent instead of 39.6 percent as currently scheduled in 2013. More dramatic still, by eliminating the 35 percent estate tax, Mitt would ensure that his five sons - the same ones who serve their nation by "helping me get elected because they think I'd be a great president" - get a golden shower when their parents Mitt and Ann leave the scene. Their payday courtesy of all other American taxpayers could reach $84,000,000 (35 percent of $240 million).
But the real windfall for Romney - among the 3,140 richest people in America - would come from zeroing out the capital gains tax (something which for obvious political reasons Mitt has proposed only on income up to $200,000.) As Time reported, in 2010 "The Romneys made an additional $5.5 million to $37.3 million from dividends and capital gains, which is generally taxed at a much lower rate of 15%." Last month, the New York Times shed light on that "$5.5 million to $37.3 million from dividends and capital gains" that represents most of Romney's income. Though Mitt left Bain Capital in 1999, 13 years later his windfall continues uninterrupted:

In what would be the final deal of his private equity career, he negotiated a retirement agreement with his former partners that has paid him a share of Bain's profits ever since, bringing the Romney family millions of dollars in income each year and bolstering the fortune that has helped finance Mr. Romney's political aspirations.

But despite his claim that Romney "will destroy this country," Rick Santorum wants to give the GOP frontrunner a much larger tax break that Mitt would give himself.
As the Quad City Times explained, under Santorum's proposal, "individual tax rates would be either 10 percent or 28 percent." Even more important for denizens of the gilded-class like Mitt Romney, Santorum would trim the rates on capital gains and dividends to 12 percent. With that windfall for the wealthy, it's no wonder, as Forbes concluded, "Rick Santorum's tax plan would blow a huge hole in the budget."
Still, Santorum's scheme pales in comparison to Rick Perry's plan to drain cash from the United States Treasury and put it in the pockets of the richest Americans.
Five days after reporting "GOP presidential candidates' tax plans would benefit the rich," the McClatchy Papers in November detailed the Texas Governor Rick Perry's pay day for plutocrats.

As McClatchy explained:

Rick Perry's proposed optional flat tax would be a windfall for wealthier Americans, giving millionaires an average tax cut of $637,418, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Research Center released Monday.
While the tax cuts would be greatest at the top of the income scale, Perry's proposal would give all taxpayers at least some tax cut, according to the analysis. Those making less than $10,000, for example, would get an average tax cut of $28.

It's no wonder that when John Harwood said on CNBC that the richest Americans would get back "hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of dollars" annually from the U.S. Treasury courtesy of Perry's tax plan, the Governor replied, "I don't care about that."
Which is quite evident from Perry's plan. His optional 20% flat tax rate would allow the top income earners to pay Uncle Sam at a much lower rate than the already low 35% level they pay currently. And Perry would not merely eliminate the estate tax, he would zero out the capital gains tax as well. As the Washington Post recently highlighted, "Over the past 20 years, more than 80 percent of the capital gains income realized in the United States has gone to 5 percent of the people; about half of all the capital gains have gone to the wealthiest 0.1 percent."
Which is also why Perry's reward for the likes of Mitt Romney would cost the Treasury an estimated $995 billion a year in lost revenue. Despite his balanced budget pledge, Perry claims that red ink is no problem. "There's nothing wrong," he said, "with lower revenue."
Especially, Newt Gingrich would have us believe, if goes to pad the accounts of men like Mitt Romney.
Gingrich's scheme for an even larger, budget-busting payout for the gilded class starts with his own flat-tax proposal. Like Rick Perry, taxpayers could choose to pay an optional flat tax rate (15 percent in Newt's case, 20 percent in Perry's proposal). The corporate tax rate would be slashed from 35 percent to 12.5 percent. Like, Perry, Gingrich would eliminate the capital gains tax altogether.
But as Suzy Khimm documented in the Washington Post, Gingrich's plan would produce an ever larger deluge of greenbacks for the upper class than Rick Perry while ensuring the Treasury hemorrhages even more red ink:

Gingrich preserves deductions for corporations and rich individuals that Perry eliminates: He preserve deductions for charitable giving and mortgage interest to all Americans, whereas Perry only keeps them for families earning less than $500,000. Perry vows to eliminate all corporate tax deductions, while Gingrich would preserve them. As such, corporations and the richest Americans could stand to benefit even more under Gingrich's plan than Perry's.
Under Perry's plan, those with more than a million in income would save $500,000 in taxes by 2015, due to a 60 percent drop in their tax rate, and those benefits would be even bigger under Gingrich. According to the Tax Policy Center, Perry's plan would lower total projected government revenue by 27 percent--a $1 trillion loss in 2015 alone. Gingrich's plan, accordingly, would result in even bigger revenue loss.

Roberton Williams of the Tax Policy Center concurred with that assessment, concluding, "You would have about three-quarters of the revenue you would have under Perry, so you have a much bigger revenue hole."

In comparison, Mitt Romney's own plan - under which the Treasury would lose up top $600 billion a year and $6.6 trillion over a decade - seems downright miserly.
But whatever during the 2012 election season, the legendarily cheap Mitt Romney will be a big winner as long as a Republican wins the White House. (Just how big, of course, we don't know, because Romney refuses to release his tax returns.) But as the GOP field's budget-busting plans to shift the tax burden from the rich down to lower income Americans all show, Mitt's gain would be our pain.