CHARLESTON, S.C. – Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich released a 2010 tax return covering his wife Callista and himself, about twenty minutes into the GOP presidential debate Thursday, disclosing an adjusted gross income that year of $3,142,066.
Gingrich had promised he would release his tax returns Thursday. Asked why he had waited until the debate was in progress to do so, Gingrich spokesperson R.C. Hammond said, to “[g]ive you something to read during the commercial break.”
The bulk of Gingrich’s income came from partnerships and corporations — amounting to a sum of $2,525,683. Wages accounted for $450,245. (LEARN MORE: The big business of Newt, Inc.)
The couple paid a total of $994,708 in taxes. Exemptions were granted for, among other things, $81,133 worth of donations to charity, including to the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.
Gingrich’s speaking fees for the year were $21,625
The former speaker also paid $19,800 in alimony in 2010.
During Monday’s debate, Mitt Romney, Gingrich’s main opponent in the first in the South primary, struggled over the issue of tax returns, bungling a response about when he would release them. On Wednesday, ABC News reported that Romney had money parked in several accounts in the tax-friendly Cayman Islands.
Gingrich said at the time that unlike his opponent, he would release his tax records. Disclosing his financial situation is likely another way to deflect attention from an coming interview with Gingrich’s ex-wife, in which she reportedly alleges that he asked her to be part of an “open marriage.”