Romney Proposes Limiting Itemized Deductions To $17,000

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney offered new details on his tax plan before the first presidential debate last week. Romney's campaign for the first time said he would pay for his proposed rate cut by capping itemized deductions around $17,000 (and possibly lower for high-income taxpayers), limiting personal exemptions and imposing an unspecified cap on the exclusion from income for employer-provided health care.

The measures are intended to pay for a 20% cut in individual income tax rates. Romney has long proposed reducing both individual and corporate tax rates but had not previously offered details on which tax benefits would need to be curbed to pay for the cuts. Romney said during the debate that his tax plan would be designed to be deficit-neutral, but the revenue baseline against which he planned to measure his proposal is unclear. Although there are still details that have not been offered (and likely will not be during the campaign), Romney's