Romney Tax Returns Stoke Resentment in Florida

At Los Angeles Times, "Romney's tax returns sit uneasily with Florida voters."

Reporting from Tampa and Plant City, Fla.—

Even before Tuesday, Mitt Romney was struggling to connect to average voters, suffering from impromptu remarks — proffering a $10,000 wager in a debate, suggesting $375,000 in speaking fees was small change — that gave off a whiff of privilege.

Then came Romney's release of tax returns showing that in 2010 he claimed $21.6 million in income, with an effective tax rate of less than 14%, far less than many middle-class families pay. He also estimated $20.9 million in income for 2011, with a rate of just over 15%.

Jeanne Johnson, a political independent and owner of the Lake Alfred Barber Shop, said that when she heard the news of Romney's taxes on TV, "I thought I was going to throw up."

"It just ruined my day," said Johnson, 51, a single mother of two who has been cutting hair since she was 20. "Like, get a real job."

Others living in her politically crucial area of Florida, where Republican presidential candidates are rushing raucously toward a Jan. 31 primary, took offense not at the sums but at Romney's resistance to releasing his taxes until he was forced.

"He hid his taxes," said Helen Roise, 70, a tax preparer at H&R Block in Plant City, a central Florida hub that bills itself as the winter strawberry capital of the world. "He didn't want us people to know. That's what bothered me."

Even so, Roise planned to vote for Romney, mainly because she is from Michigan and remembers his father, George, as a good governor.

Also at Christian Science Monitor, "Mitt Romney tax return poses a challenge: how to talk about his wealth," and "Mitt Romney's disastrous week ends with collapse in national polls."