Romney campaign: Obama looking to exploit tax data

It appears that Mitt Romney has been hesitating to release his tax returns because of fears over what President Obama’s reelection machine would do with the information.

Romney advisor Ben Ginsberg conceded as much Tuesday during a conference call with reporters regarding the release of the Republican presidential candidate’s data for the 2010 and 2011 tax years. Ginsberg was asked why Romney in 2008 handed over more than 20 years of returns to John McCain’s campaign when the former Massachusetts governor was being vetted as a possible vice presidential choice, but was Tuesday only making public two years’ worth of returns.

Ginsberg, a well-known Washington lawyer and GOP operative, defended the move, saying that “it’s an extensive disclosure,” and that the release should “satisfy the public, if not the Obama opposition research guys.”

Romney and his wife, Ann, released more than 500 pages of documents Tuesday, including detailed information on their personal income, as well as the income from three trusts.

Ginsberg said that “26 people from the Chicago area” (home of Obama’s campaign headquarters) were listening in on the conference call, intimating that they were not all members of the media. “I think that seems to sum up the state of play,” he said.

Ginsberg’s comments track what Romney himself said last week when asked whether he would release his tax returns. That was when he suggested that he might release them in April -- ostensibly after he had the GOP presidential nomination locked up.

“I sort of feel like we are showing a lot of exposure at this point,” Romney said then.

Although Romney’s document release may mollify critics such as GOP rival Newt Gingrich in the short term, it likely will only further stoke the ongoing debate over tax fairness. The documents showed that Romney paid at a 13.9% tax rate on more than $20 million in income in 2010, and that he expects to pay a slightly higher rate on a similar amount of income in 2011. (The release can be viewed here.)

The bulk of Romney’s income was derived from investments; such income is taxed at a much lower rate that income from wages and other sources. Gingrich and President Obama, for example, have paid closer to 30% on their income. According to the Internal Revenue Service, the top 400 earners in America pay close to an 18% tax rate.

Romney likely will also face questions Tuesday about a Swiss bank account that his investment advisor and trustee set up in 2003 and was closed in 2010, just as Romney was gearing up to run for president. That advisor, Brad Malt, reiterated that Romney’s trusts were blind, which means the candidate could not be involved in day-to-day investment decisions.

Malt characterized the account, with Union Bank of Switzerland, as “an investment.” Malt said he closed the account as part of periodic review of Romney’s portfolio. He said that Romney reported and paid taxes on the income from the account, just as Romney has with investments in the Cayman Islands.

Malt said any suggestion that Romney’s trusts had been seeking favorable tax treatment offshore was “flatly wrong and inaccurate.”