Romney's 2010 income included $7.4 million in carried interest, said Ben Ginsberg, national counsel for the campaign. Romney, who touts his track record in investing in companies such as Staples Inc. and The Sports Authority Inc., received $5.5 million in carried interest in 2011.
During 2010 and 2011, Romney paid $7.5 million less in taxes than he would have if various Obama tax proposals were implemented, including allowing the tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 to expire and taxing carried interest as ordinary income, said Seth Hanlon, director of fiscal reform for the Center for American Progress Action Fund. The Washington research group is often aligned with Democrats.
Ginsberg said Romney has paid 100 percent of what he owes the government.
Just Capital Gains
Romney's carried interest income stems from his tenure at Bain, which ended in 1999. The returns show that the Romneys' trusts received additional partnership interest in Bain funds, and it was unclear exactly why.
"His position on carried interest is that it's capital gains income, and capital gains should be treated as capital gains," Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom told reporters in Tampa yesterday.
Romney's return indicates that he carried forward $4.8 million in capital losses from previous years, an indication that he didn't report positive capital gains on his 2009 return. The campaign didn't release tax returns from before 2010, and Democrats are pressing the Romney campaign to provide more returns to give a fuller picture of his income and how it has changed.
"It's an extensive disclosure and we feel it satisfies" the requests for Romney to release his returns, Ginsberg told reporters yesterday.
Better Under Gingrich
Romney, who lost the South Carolina primary on Jan. 21 and is competing in the Jan. 31 contest in Florida, would fare better financially under rival Newt Gingrich's tax plan than under his own. Gingrich would end all taxation of capital gains; Romney wouldn't let high-income taxpayers receive that break.
Romney's $7 million in charitable contributions in 2010 and 2011 topped the $6.2 million he and his wife paid in taxes during the period. The couple gave $1.5 million cash in 2010 and $2.6 million cash in 2011 to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the tax documents show.
At first glance, the dollar amount of the Romneys' charitable giving is "shocking," Russell James, director of a graduate program in charitable financial planning at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, said in a telephone interview yesterday. "But it's a different story when you compare it to total wealth. It's not a shocking amount when you have a quarter- billion dollars in wealth."
'Squeaky Clean'