Romney's record on taxes

AS JOAN Vennochi knows, Mitt Romney did not raise taxes ("Mitt's no-tax mirage," Op-ed, Oct. 11). Corporate loophole closings are not tax increases. They are an attempt to keep in check aggressive tax accounting. When banks described themselves as real estate companies to avoid paying bank taxes, that was a loophole, and we closed it.

Vennochi also uses an old, inflated estimate when she describes the fee increases instituted by Governor Romney and the Legislature to address the nearly $3 billion state budget deficit in 2003. Yes, fees went up, but the actual increase in collections was $260 million, or roughly 10 percent of the solution. Ultimately, Governor Romney balanced the budget all four years he was in office without raising taxes. Over that period, he signed into law a commuter tax deduction, an investment tax credit, sales tax holidays, an expanded property tax break for seniors, a more generous research and development credit, a manufacturing tax rebate, a $250 million capital gains tax refund, and a tax break for movie companies doing business in Massachusetts, among other tax cuts. This is a record any fiscal conservative would be proud of.

ERIC FEHRNSTROM
Boston

The writer is senior adviser to Mitt Romney.

I LIKED Joan Vennochi's column. I wish she had gone further and pointed out that Romney's tax policy reduced state aid to cities and towns, resulting in increases in local property taxes and/or sharp reductions in the quality of K-12 education. In addition, tuition and fees at state colleges and universities increased 63 percent during his tenure.

Both these shortfalls undermine the Commonwealth's long-term economic growth and development, something our former governor claims to have supported and fostered with his no-new-taxes policy.

It's time we confronted Republicans with both the falseness and destructiveness of their harping on the need to lower taxes. Regular tax revenues are raised with an eye to the ability to pay. Fees, tuition, and local property taxes are less well calibrated to ability to pay, and are really a back-door way of sparing the well-to-do from their share of supporting the social infrastructure on which all of our wealth depends.

MARGARET B. WOOD
Boston