On Sunday’s broadcast of “Fox News Sunday,” former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said he would release two years of tax returns and put to rest all of the questions that some say have been plaguing his campaign, and perhaps led to his loss in the South Carolina primary on Saturday.
“Well, actually, what we said was that I was planning on releasing them in April — when they have been released by other candidates, in the past,” Romney said. “But you know what, given all of the attention that’s been focused on tax returns, given the distraction that I think they became in these last couple of weeks, look, I am going to make it clear to you now: I will release my tax returns for 2010 — which are the last returns that were completed — and do it on Tuesday of this week, and I’ll also release an estimate for 2011 tax returns. So you’ll have two years. People can look at and put them on the website and go through the pages. This I think, we made a mistake in holding off as long as we did. It just was a distraction and we want to get back to the real issues in the campaign and leadership, character, a vision for America, how to get jobs in America and reign in the excessive scale of the federal government.”
Romney said he wouldn’t be releasing 12 years of returns like his father, former Michigan Gov. George Romney, did when he ran for president.
“That will be more than any other Republican candidate and I will not go back to my dad’s years,” he said. “That was before the Internet. We’ll put our returns on the Internet. It will provide plenty of information for people to understand the sources of my income are exactly as described in the financial disclosure statements we put out several months ago.”
Some have suggested Romney was holding back for fear that it would be discovered he had some money invested in offshore accounts, but Romney said there was nothing there.
“The Cayman Islands account sort of speak is an apparently an investment that was made in an entity that invested in the United States. The taxes paid on that are full U.S. taxes and, by the way, it was the same issue four years ago and responded to four years ago and nothing changed since then,” Romney said. “I know people will try to find something, but we pay full fair taxes and you will see it is a substantial amount.