The Republican hopeful's tax returns have not shocked the US, but they give his party another reason not to vote for him
Mitt Romney and millions of his fellow Americans were raised by their parents in the knowledge that the United States was born in a revolt against paying taxes.
The fact that the people who objected to the taxes, then as now, were mostly rich rather than poor often gets deliberately overlooked in this narrative. But since then, taxes have often played a very different role in US political debate to their role in modern European debates.
That's why the publication of Romney's tax returns, and the revelation that the Republican presidential hopeful may have paid only a 13.9% rate of tax on his $42.5m (£27m) income in 2010, may not have quite the explosively negative impact on his White House campaign that Europeans would imagine, even in these economically troubled times.
There are two aspects to this difference. The first is that getting rich remains a central part of the legendary American dream. Being rich is not, in itself, a problem for either politicians or voters.
So while Romney's wealth certainly makes him part of the 1%, not the 99% on whose behalf campaigns like the Occupy movement have mobilised, it doesn't necessarily mark him out from the political crowd. With rare exceptions – such as Bill Clinton in his pre-presidential days – most US politicians are extremely rich, whatever party they come from, as Democrats John Kerry and Nancy Pelosi can show too.
The second difference is that the terms in which US politics debates taxes are much more hostile than they are in Europe. Those Dirty Rotten Taxes is the title of book by Charles Adams which charts the history of American tax revolts, often armed. In it the tax rebels are portrayed not as outlaws but as mainstream heroes, fighting for the ordinary man – even if their campaigns were often mostly for the rich.
Every year, Americans mark so-called Tax Freedom Day – the day in the year on which the nation has earned enough money to finance its tax liabilities – with great ceremony. Despite efforts by anti-tax campaigners in Europe, such stunts have never caught on here.
That's not to say that all Americans share this cultural antipathy to taxes. If you visit the Washington HQ of the Internal Revenue Service ,you will see above the entrance – carved in stone – the words of the prewar supreme court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: "Taxes are what we pay for a civilised society."
That's more of a European sentiment than an American one these days, but it is a reminder that not all Americans are tax-haters.
Romney's tax position may seem to be an open-and-shut scandal, and on one level it is. But the truth is that it is just one more reason why many Republicans – and others – may not be enthusiastic about voting for him.
For Romney it is any-stick-to-beat-a-dog time these days. His electability is often asserted, not least by himself, but there is not a lot of evidence to support the claim yet.
In the primaries, of which he has won just one so far, voters have had plenty of choice if they want reasons not to vote for Romney.
Some react against his pragmatism, others his Mormonism, his moderation, or the fact that he was governor of liberal Massachusetts or that he speaks French. Now there are his tax records too.
Romney's big problem is not that he has just given his party another reason to doubt that he's the man. It's that he has failed so far to give them a compelling big reason to believe that he's got what it takes to beat Barack Obama in November. Right now, the best he has got going for him is that none of his rivals yet seems to have got it either.