A plane carrying Mitt Romney’s wife Ann made an emergency landing Friday afternoon after smoke filled the cabin. No injuries were reported. An apparent electrical fire forced the detour on the flight from Omaha, Neb., to Los Angeles, campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul said. The candidate and his wife spoke immediately after the incident, said Saul, who shared photographs on Twitter of firefighters boarding the private jet. Rick Gorka, a spokesman traveling with Mitt Romney, said Ann Romney told her husband that everyone was fine. — The Associated Press
Mitt Romney paid $1.95 million in taxes on his 2011 investment income of $13.7 million, his campaign revealed Friday, making good on Romney’s promise earlier this year to eventually release his full returns for that year.
Romney, who made millions by running Bain Capital, a private equity firm, paid an effective federal tax rate of 14.1 percent, primarily because most of his income was in the form of capital gains that are taxed at a lower rate than ordinary income. Romney has said that he has paid at least 13 percent in federal income taxes in each of the last 10 years.
In order for that claim to be true in 2011, Romney had to voluntarily take a smaller deduction than he was entitled to for his charitable deductions, his advisers said Friday.
Romney and his wife, Ann, donated about $4 million to charity in 2011, but claimed only $2.25 million as a deduction. The campaign said that Romney’s tax liability would have been far lower in 2011 had the Romneys claimed the full deduction for their charitable contributions.
“The Romneys thus limited their deduction of charitable contributions to conform to the governor’s statement in August, based upon the January estimate of income, that he paid at least 13 percent in income taxes in each of the last 10 years," said R. Bradford Malt, Romney’s trustee.
The Republican prresidential nominee, who released his 2010 tax returns in January, continues to refuse demands from President Barack Obama’s campaign and other Democrats to release multiple years of his returns. Obama has sought to portray Romney as an out-of-touch millionaire who used offshore accounts and accounting gimmicks to reduce his tax liability.
In an indication that the summaries will not satisfy Romney’s critics, Brad Woodhouse, the communications director for the Democratic National Committee, posted the following message on Twitter: “Summaries? What is Romney hiding? This isn’t just abt rates — how about Swiss Bank Accts, Bermuda Shell Cos and Caymans Investments?"
But Romney released a letter later Friday from his tax advisers providing a summary of his tax liability for a 20-year period from 1990 to 2009. The summary says that Romney paid taxes every year during that period, that the lowest annual federal tax rate was 13.66 percent and that the Romneys gave an average of 13.45 percent of their income to charity during the period.
