Mitt Romney releases 2011 tax returns

Mitt Romney released his 2011 tax return today. Releasing information on a Friday afternoon is traditionally a way to reduce the amount of media exposure.

Trustee Brad Malt writes:  In advance of the posting of these new documents, I wanted to provide some top-line details.  Regarding the newly-filed 2011 Tax Return:

• 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.

The Romneys’ generous charitable donations in 2011 could have further reduced their tax obligation for the year. However, the Romneys decided to limit their deduction of charitable contributions so to "fit" the Governor's statement in August, based upon the January estimate of income, that he paid at least 13% in income taxes in each of the last 10 years.

Had the Romney's actually taken the legal deductions available to them, they would have paid an effective tax rate of 9%.

Now, at a time when Mitt Romney is criticizing Americans for not paying their share of taxes, how would it look for Mitt to only pay 9%?

Yeah, he thought so too. And so, he chose to NOT take a deduction so that his tax rate would be in line with the figure he had previously stated.

By the way - it's worth noting that even though Mitt Romney paid more than he needed to (about $200,000), he has the right to go back and amend his tax return for three years and take that full tax deduction.

I'm betting that should he lose this election, that's exactly what he'll do.
The information was released in a blog post, written by the manager of Romney's blind trust since 2003, R. Bradford Malt, which said the Romneys had filed their 2011 tax return with the IRS Friday morning. It also indicated that the Romneys' tax preparer, PricewaterhouseCoopers, would provide a letter summarizing the tax rates that the Romneys paid from 1990 to 2009.

According to Malt, the Romneys paid an average annual effective federal tax rate of 20.2 percent, with the lowest rate coming in at 13.66 percent. Over that same stretch of time, they gave an average of 13.45 percent of their adjusted gross income to charity.

"The Romneys' generous charitable donations in 2011 would have significantly reduced their tax obligation for the year. 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% in income taxes in each of the last 10 years," Malt wrote.