The Republican Ticket, by Donkey Hotey (who else?) Creative Commons

The Romneys filed their 2011 tax returns with the IRS today, and at 3:00pm, the Romney camp plans on making them available online. They will also be posting a notarized letter from PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP (PWC) summarizing the tax rates for the Romneys’ last twenty years worth of tax returns. The Romney camp has, so far, only released two years worth of tax returns. This release will bring it to three.

Romney’s camp summarized the 2011 returns thusly:

In 2011, the Romneys paid $1,935,708 in taxes on $13,696,951 in mostly investment income.

The Romneys’ effective tax rate for 2011 was 14.1%.

The Romneys donated $4,020,772 to charity in 2011, amounting to nearly 30% of their income.

The Romneys claimed a deduction for $2.25 million of those charitable contributions.

Romney has claimed in the past that he had paid at least 13% of his income in taxes each year over the last ten years. The median income earner pays 25% in taxes.

According to the Romney Camp, the PWC letter will show that, over the last twenty years:

In each year during the entire 20-year period, the Romneys owed both state and federal income taxes.

Over the entire 20-year period, the average annual effective federal tax rate was 20.20%.

Over the entire 20-year period, the lowest annual effective federal personal tax rate was 13.66%.

Over the entire 20-year period, the Romneys gave to charity an average of 13.45% of their adjusted gross income.

Over the entire 20-year period, the total federal and state taxes owed plus the total charitable donations deducted represented 38.49% of total AGI.

During the 20-year period covered by the PWC letter, Gov. and Mrs. Romney paid 100 percent of the taxes that they owed.

The issue of Romney’s tax returns has been hanging around for some time with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid being one of the most vocal critics of the fact that they have not released more than two years worth of releases.

http://www.mittromney.com/blogs/mitts-view/2012/09/note-trustee-brad-malt