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He said the "48, 49 percent" that supports President Barack Obama are "people who pay no income tax." Romney was correct that a similar percentage of people pay no federal income tax, such as the elderly and the poor. We rated that part of his claim

But Obama is expected to win millions of votes from people who do pay federal income taxes, and Romney is expected to win millions of votes from people who do not pay federal income taxes. We rated that part of Romney’s claim

Romney also presented a series of arguments he said he would use to persuade independent voters they would be better off under a new president, for example, that "50 percent of kids coming out of school can't get a job."It’s a stat he likes to repeat, but this time he left off an important piece. That "50 percent" actually includes students out of college who haven’t found a job and those who got a job that doesn’t require a college degree. We rated his claim

We also rated another familiar Romney claim, that President Obama promised "he'd keep unemployment below 8 percent" if the stimulus passed.Obama didn’t say that. Rather, his Council of Economic Advisers predicted that the stimulus would hold it to that level. Their report included heavy disclaimers that the projections had "significant margins of error" and a high degree of uncertainty due to a recession that is "unusual both in its fundamental causes and its severity." It wasn’t a promise or guarantee. We rated the statement http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2012/sep/18/fact-check
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FactCheck.org:

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Romney is a bit out of date with his claim that 47 percent of Americans pay no federal income tax. That was true in 2009, but the number is lower now, and falling as the economy improves and more people are working and getting paychecks.

Figures come from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, and its most recent analysis in July 2011 put the figure for that year at 46.4 percent. That comes to about 76 million individuals or families who paid no federal income taxes in 2011. TPC projected that the percentage would fall to 46 percent this year, and to 44 percent in 2013, under current tax policies.

Whether those who pay no federal income tax are people who “believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it” is a matter of opinion. But Romney is wrong to say that all of those in that 47 percent are “dependent upon government.”

Let’s take a closer look at the 46.4 percenters.

According to the Tax Policy Center, about half of those who owe no federal income tax are people whose incomes are so low that when standard income tax provisions — personal exemptions for taxpayers and dependents and the standard deduction — are factored in, that simply leaves no income to be taxed. Those are people who earned less than about $27,000.

But that doesn’t mean those folks paid no taxes at all. Many of them paid payroll taxes, those taxes taken out of a paycheck by an employer to fund programs such as Social Security and Medicare. They also pay federal excise taxes, such as those on gasoline, and they may also pay state and local income taxes or property taxes.

So that’s half of Romney’s 46.4 percenters. The rest pay no federal income tax due to tax benefits and credits. Here’s the rest of the breakdown:

¦ 22 percent receive senior tax benefits — the extra standard deduction for seniors, the exclusion of a portion of Social Security benefits, and the credit for seniors. Most of them are older people on Social Security whose adjusted gross income is less than $25,000.

¦ 15.2 percent receive tax credits for children and the working poor. That includes the child tax credit and the earned income tax credit. The child tax credit was enacted under Democratic President Bill Clinton, but it doubled under Republican President George W. Bush. The earned income tax credit was enacted under Republican President Gerald Ford, and was expanded under presidents of both parties. Republican President Ronald Reagan once praised it as “one of the best antipoverty programs this country’s ever seen.” As a result of various tax expenditures, about two thirds of households with children making between $40,000 and $50,000 owed no federal income taxes.

¦ The rest ended up owing no federal income tax due to various tax expenditures such as education credits, itemized deductions or reduced rates on capital gains and dividends. Most of this group are in the middle to upper income brackets. In fact, the TPC estimates there are about 7,000 families and individuals who earn $1 million a year or more and still pay no federal income tax.

So when Romney says all of those in the 46 percent are “dependent on government,” that’s not accurate. Of the estimated 76 million who paid no federal income tax in 2011, 61 percent earned anywhere between $10,000 and $50,000.

The TPC report was a one-year snapshot in a particularly difficult economic year. The number of people who owed no federal income tax was unusually high in 2011, which was still a recession year. Some of the temporary tax credits enacted by Obama in reaction to the economic crisis will soon go away, and the numbers should drop in coming years.

It’s safe to say that most of the 46.4 percent referred to by Romney are in the lower income brackets. According to the most recent Gallup polls of registered voters, 37 percent of those making less than $36,000 a year indicate they plan to vote for Romney. Moreover, as we noted earlier, a sizable chunk of 46.4 percenters are retirees, and among those 65 and older, Romney leads Obama by nine points, 52 percent to 43 percent. According to a Rasmussen Reports poll of likely voters between Sept. 10 and 16, 40 percent of those making less than $20,000 said they plan to vote for Romney; 50 percent of those making between $20,000 and $40,000 said they supported Romney. The Pew Research Center similarly found in its latest poll that 32 percent of those making less than $30,000 and 42 percent of those making between $30,000 and $50,000 support Romney — as do a plurality of seniors.

A map put out by the Tax Foundation of the 10 states with the highest and lowest percentage of filers with no federal tax liability shows that the states with the highest percentage of non-filers are, by-and-large, states that typically vote Republican, while the 10 states with the lowest percentage of non-filers tend to be Democratic-leaning.

That’s not a precise measure of the voting habits of those who don’t pay federal income taxes, but it suggests Romney is way off when he assumes all of the 46.4 percenters vote Democratic. http://factcheck.org/2012/09/dependency-and-romneys-47-percenters/

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Just sayin'...