Romney paid 14% in tax

Candidate releases information for 2011, critics seek more

WASHINGTON— Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney paid $1.95 million in taxes on his 2011 investment income of $13.7 million, his campaign revealed Friday, making good on his promise to eventually release his full returns for that year.

Romney, who made millions by running Bain Capital, a private equity firm, paid an effective federal tax rate of 14.1 per cent, primarily because most of his income was in the form of capital gains that are taxed at a lower rate than ordinary income. Romney has said that he has paid at least13 per cent in federal income taxes in each of the last 10 years.

In order for that claim to be true in 2011, Romney had to voluntarily take a smaller deduction than he was entitled to for his charitable deductions, his advisers said Friday.

Romney and his wife, Ann, donated about $4 million to charity in 2011, but claimed only $2.25 million as a deduction.

The campaign said that Romney’s tax liability would have been far lower in 2011 had the Romneys claimed the full deduction for their charitable contributions. “The Romneys thus limited their deduction of charitable contributions to conform to the governor’s statement in August, based upon the January estimate of income, that he paid at least 13 per cent in income taxes in each of the last 10 years,” said Brad Malt, Romney’s trustee. Romney, who released his 2010 tax returns in January, continues to refuse demands from President Barack Obama’s campaign and other Democrats to release multiple years of his returns. Obama has sought to portray Romney as an out-of-touch millionaire who used offshore accounts and accounting gimmicks to reduce his tax liability. In an indication that the summaries will not satisfy critics, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who has questioned whether Romney paid taxes in some years, criticized the move. “The information released today reveals that Mitt Romney manipulated one of the only two years of tax returns he’s seen fit to show the American people — and then only to ‘conform’ with his public statements,” the Democrat said in a statement. Romney released a letter later Friday from his tax advisers providing a summary of his tax liability for a 20-year period from 1990 to 2009. The summary says Romney paid taxes every year during that period, that the lowest annual federal tax rate was 13.66 per cent and that the Romneys gave an average of 13.45 per cent of their income to charity during the period.