Mitt Romney has heard the calls to release his tax records, and he’s delivered this morning, releasing his 2010 and 2011 returns, as well as the returns for the Romney family trusts. In a shocking twist, the documents revealed that Romney had spent the better part of the past two years working part-time as a receptionist in an insurance office in Quakertown, PA, making $11 an hour to raise funds for his presidential campaign.
Just kidding, they revealed that he’s actually incredibly rich!
That is, of course, not a surprise. Being rich is Romney’s whole thing, the proof for his argument that he’d make a better president than his rivals. But it’s still instructive to see exactly how rich he is.
The factoids:
–In the past two years combined, Romney earned a grand total of $45 million. As he was technically unemployed at the time, this money came nearly entirely from investment income. We’re not going to go full-Gawker and say he was doing “literally nothing at all” — the world needs investors — but when Romney talks about “the bitter politics of envy” you will be forgiven for remembering that figure.
–Of that $45 million dollars, Romney will pay $6.2 million in taxes, giving him an effective tax rate of 13.9%. Is that a lot? Not enough? Have a tax policy debate in the comments!
UPDATE: The NYT has a good graphic on each of the Big Three candidates’ tax returns. With 10 times the income as Barack Obama, Romney paid half the effective tax rate the president did. He also donated roughly 10 times as much to charity.
Romney’s 2011 tax return is below, for your edification:
1040-2011
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