Mitt Romney earned $21.6 million in 2010 and paid 13.9 percent of that amount in income taxes, using the preferential rate on investment income and charitable deductions to pay a smaller share of his earnings than top wage earners typically do.
The former private-equity executive and Massachusetts governor earned more than half of his income from capital gains and dividends, which are taxed at a top rate of 15 percent, rather than the 35 percent top rate for ordinary income. Romney's campaign showed his tax returns to reporters Monday night and will release them publicly on Tuesday.
Romney's income puts him near the very top of U.S. taxpayers. In 2008, according to the Internal Revenue Service, the median adjusted gross income was $33,048, which Romney made in less than a day. The minimum adjusted gross income needed to be included in the top 1 percent of taxpayers was $380,354, about Romney's earnings in a week.
The campaign is also releasing an estimated tax return for 2011 showing that Romney had an effective tax rate of 15.4 percent on $20.9 million in adjusted gross income. That return hasn't been filed yet with the IRS.
Romney's 2010 income included $7.4 million in carried interest, said Ben Ginsberg, national counsel for the campaign. Romney was an executive at Bain Capital. He received $5.5 million in carried interest in 2011.
Omaha billionaire Warren Buffett, who has called for raising taxes on high-income Americans, said he blames Congress, not Romney, for the Republican presidential candidate's tax rate.
"It's the wrong policy to have," Buffett told Bloomberg Television in an interview Monday. "He's not going to pay more than the law requires, and I don't fault him for that in the least. But I do fault a law that allows him and me earning enormous sums to pay overall federal taxes at a rate that's about half what the average person in my office pays."
In 2008, according to IRS statistics, fewer than 15 percent of taxpayers earning more than $200,000 had effective tax rates of less than 15 percent.
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