Charitable donations helped to increase the Romneys' tax obligations.
Mitt Romney’s campaign released a summary of his 2011 tax returns, saying that the Republican presidential candidate paid $1.9 million in taxes for an effective rate of 14.1 percent.
According to the summary he released, Romney earned $13.69 million in 2011, representing income primarily from his investments.
The topic of Romney’s tax returns has been controversial throughout much of the 2012 campaign. Democratic leaders have called for the Republican candidate to release his tax returns from the last several years. Romney has refused to release more than the last two years of his returns.
He released information on the 2011 returns at 3 p.m. on Friday, following a week where his campaign had been rocked by a torrent of bad poll numbers and unflattering news stories.
By comparison, the average worker making $60,000 pays an effective tax rate of roughly 29 percent.
The results indicated that Romney and his wife, Ann, donated $4.02 million to charity, roughly 30 percent of their income. Those donations helped to increase the Romneys' tax obligations, according to the candidate’s campaign. The Romneys claimed a tax deduction of $2.25 million of those charitable donations in order to pay a higher tax rate than they might have paid otherwise.
In a statement, Romney campaign spokeswoman Michele Davis said that Romney “has been clear that no American need pay more than he or she owes under the law."
"At the same time, he was in the unique position of having made a commitment to the public that his tax rate would be above 13 percent," she said. "In order to be consistent with that statement, the Romneys limited their deduction of charitable contributions.”
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(Photo: Evan Vucci/AP Photo)
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