But the forms also show Romney has been generous with charities. Romney gave $7 million, or 16.4 percent of his income, to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and other charitable causes over the two years.
The forms show he gave at least $4.1 million to the church alone.
The disclosure comes less than a week after rival Newt Gingrich released his 2010 tax returns.
Gingrich’s return shows that he and his wife earned nearly $3.2 million in 2010 and paid nearly 31 percent of that in taxes. The forms also show that the couple gave more than $81,000 to charity, a little over 2 percent of their income. The bulk of Gingrich’s income came through other corporations, such as Gingrich Holdings Inc.
Some other candidates have also resisted releasing their returns. US Representative Ron Paul said in a debate last week that he would probably be embarrassed to release his returns with his more modest income. And Rick Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator, said he didn’t have ready access to his returns, because they were on his home computer.
But Romney has faced more pressure to release his returns because of his immense wealth, which aides have estimated could be as high as $250 million, and strong position in the national polls.
Until recently, Romney appeared to be the clear front-runner in the nomination process, though Gingrich has surged recently to challenge that position.
In addition, political analysts say Romney has hurt his standings by refusing to release his returns earlier and changing his positions.
As recently as two weeks ago, Romney said he had no plans to release his returns. Then he said he would release them in April - and was vague about whether he would release returns for multiple years - before finally committing to releasing them today.
