So Mitt Romney released his new tax cut plan in advance of tonight’s Republican debate. As expected, it makes severe cuts to overall tax rates, particularly for those in the top bracket.

Mitt Romney released a new tax plan Wednesday that calls for a 20 percent across-the-board cut to individual tax rates.

Romney would also reduce the corporate tax rate (to 25%) and put an end to the capital gains tax for most taxpayers.

Romney’s proposal would reduce the top 35 percent tax rate to 28 percent, while the bottom 10 percent rate would be reduced to 8 percent.

He calls for a 20 percent across-the-board cut in income taxes; an end to the capital gains tax for families making under $200,000; and a major cut to corporate tax rates. It would also create a “territorial” system that would allow corporations to not pay U.S. taxes on any profits made overseas.

Just for fun, there’s also the “premium support” plan for Medicare, with all seniors getting vouchers for health insurance rather than a guaranteed plan (thanks, Ron Wyden!), and an increase in the retirement age.

Romney claimed that the “1%” (he actually used that phrase) would continue to pay as much as they do now, by limiting deductions. But a 20% cut in their tax rate doesn’t seem like it could be made up. And that’s what the Obama campaign led with, claiming that the plan would increase the deficit by $2 trillion over ten years.

In that respect, the Romney plan bears at least some resemblance to… Obama’s corporate tax cut plan, according to Zach Carter:

President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have begun a new form of competition: proposing corporate tax cut plans that they claim, wrongly, won’t cost the Treasury a dime. Almost immediately after Obama unveiled his plan on Wednesday, one of the nation’s leading tax policy experts threw cold water on the administration’s claim that its tax overhaul could be implemented “without adding a dime to the deficit.” A separate plan released Wednesday by Republican presidential contender Romney, the expert said, would almost certainly expand the deficit.

While the plan’s basic outlines have been advocated by both liberal and conservative tax experts for decades, the prospect of accomplishing those goals without adding to the deficit is far-fetched, said Rebecca Wilkins, senior counsel for federal tax policy at the nonpartisan nonprofit Citizens for Tax Justice.

“We think at best it’s revenue-neutral, and that is very disappointing,” Wilkins told HuffPost. “Corporations are already paying a really low rate, and lots of corporations aren’t paying any taxes at all. There’s really an opportunity to broaden the base and raise revenue, and you hate to see them leaving that on the table.” [...]

Overall, the tax cuts proposed by the Treasury Department would cost about $1.2 trillion during the next decade. The Obama administration outlined plans to narrow that deficit by $300 billion by closing certain business tax loopholes, but roughly $900 billion in other offsets was left unspecified.

So we have a where’s-the-beef tax plan from Romney, or a where’s-the-beef corporate tax plan from Obama. And these plans are practically the work of Noam Chomsky compared to the other Republican Presidential candidates, who would either eliminate large parts of the tax code or completely flatten them.

Enjoy your campaign.