Seeking to put to rest lingering questions about his tax history, GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney on Friday released his 2011 tax return as well as a 20-year “summary” of what he has paid to the IRS -- a financial history, as told by tax preparers, that appears to punch a hole in Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid’s claim that the Republican presidential nominee avoided paying federal income taxes for more than a decade.

PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP, the tax preparer for Mr. Romney and wife Ann, said that the former Massachusetts governor paid an effective tax rate of 14.1 percent last year and the average of annual “effective federal personal income tax rates” was just over 20 percent between 1990 and 2009. The lowest annual “effective federal personal income tax rate” for the couple was 13.66 percent, the auditors said.

“Over the entire 20-year period, the total federal and state taxes owed plus the total charitable donations deducted represented 38.49 percent of total [annual gross income],” R. Bradford Malt, the lead trustee on the Romneys’ blind trusts, said in a memo posted on the campaign’s website.

President Obama’s presidential campaign and top Democrats on Capitol Hill have called on Mr. Romney to come clean on more of his tax returns, suggesting his Swiss bank accounts and investments in the Cayman Islands show he has something to hide. They also were more than happy to point out that Mr. Romney’s father, George Romney, released 12 years of his tax history when he ran for president about 40 years ago.

Citing an anonymous source, Mr. Reid went the furthest, saying that Mr. Romney had not released his tax returns because “he didn’t pay taxes for 10 years” -- a claim that the Nevada Democrat repeated on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

Mr. Romney countered that over the past ten years he never paid less than 13 percent of his taxable income and that “Harry Reid’s charge is totally false.”

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Editor's Note: So, with Harry Reid's politically motivated lie exposed, he does what any defeated Progressive reprobate would do, he starts name-calling and demonizing. Earlier this week, Mr. Reid pathetically attacked Mr. Romney's practice of his religion, even as the liar Reid presents himself as a Mormon. Perhaps it is time for all church elders of every religion to start chastising the politicians for bastardizing religion for political gain...


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