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His company is Rossrock, a Manhattan-based private investment firm that focuses on commercial real estate and distressed commercial mortgages.
“I realize I am very fortunate, and in fact I am a member of the 1 percent,” Mr. Ross wrote in an email. His résumé is studded with elite institutions: Yale, Columbia Law School and stints at the law firms Cravath, Swaine & Moore in New York, and Holland & Hart in Denver. Since his company fits the category of private equity, he even has carried interest, the kind of incentive compensation that enabled Mitt Romney to pay such a low tax rate.
Yet Mr. Ross told me that he paid 102 percent of his taxable income in federal, state, and local taxes for 2010.
“My entire taxable income, plus some, went to the payment of taxes,” Mr. Ross said. “This does not include real estate taxes, sales taxes, and other taxes I paid for 2010.” When he told friends and family, they were “astounded,” he said.
In the midst of a national debate over tax rates and policy, I lifted the veil last week on my income tax rates for 2010, a year in which I paid 37 percent of my adjusted gross income (total income minus things like retirement contributions) in federal, state, and city income taxes and 74 percent of my taxable income (after deductions like state and local taxes).
I was dismayed by the comparison to Mr. Romney — who paid 13.9 percent of his adjusted gross income of $21.7 million and 17.5 percent of his taxable income of $17.1 million — as well as by the possibility that I paid a higher tax rate than just about anyone. So I invited readers to send me emails disclosing their tax rates and circumstances.
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