Real News:' Making a Clear Case for Tax Reform

Republican candidate for president Mitt Romney has been consistently dogged by critics for the lack of specifics in his tax reform plan regarding what loopholes and deductions he would end. The Obama team has pushed the matter on the campaign trail and during both debates. The non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation came out late last week and said that closing every single tax loophole would only allow for a 4 percent tax cut not the 20 percent Romney is proposing . During his first post-debate interview released Monday, Republican vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan told the Wall Street Journal that the presidential campaign is putting a focus on taxes and deficit cutting that could lead to a bipartisan overhaul on the issue during a Romney Administration.

During the interview, Ryan told WSJ that he would not detail which tax breaks the Romney plan would scale back, because "we shouldn't be negotiating the details of tax reform in the middle of a campaign."

Is it even worth it to the Romney campaign to get in deep with details when discussing this issue considering the mainstream portrayal of the tax reform debate has been questioned and may be incomplete? Can we look at taxes as strictly revenue generating when ignoring the part of the tax code that is market based? Across the Atlantic this past weekend in France, where the revenue generating income tax rate on the wealthiest 1 percent will soon be 75 percent, young entrepreneurs have revolted to additional taxes on capital gains and dividends which were to be taxed at a 60 percent rate. The Economist reports Saturday that 65,000 French entrepreneurs launched a social-media campaign against the oppressive dividends rates that led Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici to reconsider the policy in just a few days.

On 'Real News' Monday the panel debated how the Romney campaign could best articulate their positions on tax reform, watch a clip below: