Romney Says His Effective Tax Rate Is About 15 Percent
By Ashley Parker
January 17, 2012, 11:20 am
thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com
FLORENCE, S.C. — After speaking to a smaller-than-usual crowd on Tuesday morning in Florence, S.C., Mitt Romney took questions from the press and said that his effective tax rate was about 15 percent.
“It’s probably closer to the 15 percent rate than anything,” Mr. Romney said. “Because my last 10 years, I’ve — my income comes overwhelmingly from some investments made in the past, whether ordinary income or earned annually. I got a little bit of income from my book, but I gave that all away.”
Mr. Romney added: “And then I get speaker’s fees from time to time, but not very much.”
In fact, in the most recent year, Mr. Romney made $374,327.62 in speaker’s fees, at an average of $41,592 per speech, according to his public financial disclosure reports.
The vast majority of Mr. Romney’s income this year came in the form of investment income, whether dividends or capital gains on mutual funds and retirement accounts, or his post-retirement share of profits and investment returns from Bain Capital, which would be subject to the same 15 percent tax rate.
This disclosure may fuel the continuing debate about Mr. Romney’s leadership at Bain Capital, a private equity firm. Democrats and his Republican rivals have sought to cast him as a corporate raider and, in the words of Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, a “vulture” capitalist.
In Monday night’s Republican debate, Mr. Romney was pressed about releasing his income tax returns, which he has not yet done, and he hinted that he would release them closer to April. On Tuesday, Mr. Romney again said that April’s tax season seemed to be the appropriate month for such a disclosure, and that he was following “tradition” from previous presidential races.
“And I know that if I’m the nominee, people will want to see the most recent year, and see what happened in the most recent year and what things are up to date and so they’ll want to see the tax returns that come out in April,” Mr. Romney said. “So rather than sort of have multiple releases of tax returns, why, we’ll wait until the tax returns for the most recent year are completed, then release them.”
Mr. Romney’s early morning event got off to a sleepy start. The ballroom was one of his least crowded in recent weeks, with only a little less than 100 people waiting to greet him. As NBC News’s Garrett Haake noted on Twitter: “Romney advance staff now taking down a ladder that had been set up for high & wide camera shots of crowds, or lack thereof.” |
