{mosads}Romney said Tuesday that his tax rate is “probably closer to the 15 percent rate than anything,” explaining that his income for the past decade “comes overwhelmingly from investments.”
Most of Romney’s income would be in the form of capital gains, which is taxed at a 15 percent rate.
“I think we ought to rename our flat tax, we have a 15 percent flat tax, so this would be the ‘Mitt Romney flat tax,’ all Americans would pay the rate Mitt Romney paid, I think it’s terrific,” Gingrich continued.
Gingrich also doubled-down on his criticism of Romney for not releasing his tax returns and called on him to do so before South Carolina votes on Saturday, Jan. 21.
“What is he saying to the people of South Carolina, ‘You’re not important enough for me to release my income tax, nor are the people of Florida.’ We’ll get a list of every state he doesn’t think is important enough,” Gingrich said. “Now, even if there’s nothing there, why isn’t he releasing it.”
Romney said during the GOP debate on Monday night that he had examined the tradition for Republican presidential candidates to release their tax returns—a tradition dating at least back to 1967, when Romney’s father George Romney ran for the Republican nomination and released 12 years of tax returns, reported as an unprecedented move in American politics at the time.
“I hadn’t planned on releasing tax records, because the law requires us to release all of our assets, of everything we own, that I’ve already release, it’s a pretty full disclosure,” Romney said during the debate, but went on to say that he is not “opposed” to following the tradition. “I anticipate most likely I’ll be asked to do that in April and I’ll do that.”
But Gingrich criticized Romney’s word choice.
“He didn’t say he would, he said he might,” he told South Carolina voters.