Video: VIDEO | Speaking to reporters in South Carolina, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said he paid at least 13 percent in taxes for each of last 10 years.
GREER, S.C. — Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said Thursday that he has paid a federal income tax rate of at least 13 percent in each of the last 10 years, bowing to months of political pressure to disclose more information about his vast personal fortune.
“I did go back and look at my taxes, and over the past 10 years I never paid less than 13 percent. I think the most recent year is 13.6 or something like that. So I paid taxes every single year,” he told reporters here Thursday.
Reality check: How Romney’s tax rate compares to other Americans.
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President Obama and his allies have been hammering Romney relentlessly, both in television advertisements and on the campaign trail, for refusing to disclose more than two years of tax returns. They have suggested that Romney, one of the richest Americans ever to win a major party’s presidential nomination, is hiding something about his personal finances.
Romney’s disclosure Thursday came in response to a reporter’s question at a news conference Romney had hoped would focus on a white-board presentation he gave outlining his latest attack on Obama over Medicare. Romney’s advisers insisted that the former Massachusetts governor had not planned to provide new information about his taxes but that, when asked about his tax rate, he provided an honest answer.
Romney sounded rankled by the very question, though, saying, “the fascination with taxes I’ve paid I find to be very small-minded compared to the broad issues that we face.”
If the candidate hoped his answer would put the issue to rest, he ended up only inviting more questions. Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt quickly challenged Romney to “prove it.”
“He has the ability to answer all of these questions by releasing several years of tax returns. He simply hasn’t done that,” LaBolt told reporters on a conference call. LaBolt noted that Romney’s father, George, released 12 years of income tax returns when he ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 1968.
In 2011, Obama paid an effective rate of 20.5 percent, according to his tax returns. Americans paid an average tax rate of 17.4 percent in 2009, according to a report from the Congressional Budget Office that was released last month — the lowest average rate paid since 1979 and a drop from the 19.9 percent paid in 2007.
There is no legal requirement for presidential candidates to release any income tax returns, although the Federal Election Commission requires candidates to release personal financial disclosures. Romney’s disclosure estimates his personal fortune at between $190 million and $250 million.
Romney has long resisted providing more than two years’ returns because he said his Democratic opponents would use the details of his financial holdings as the basis of campaign attacks.
In an interview with NBC’s “Rock Center” that aired Thursday, the candidate’s wife said Democrats wants the records for “ammunition.” “The more we get attacked, the more we get questioned, the more we get pushed,” Ann Romney said, adding that the couple has been “very transparent to what’s legally required of us.”
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