Exclusive: Santorum releases four years of tax returns

Rick Santorum said they would come this week, and here are four years worth of his taxes, from years 2007 through 2010.

They can be found here, here, here and here. The returns are the most in number that have been released by any of the major GOP contenders - Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney didn't release several years' worth.

Santorum and his wife Karen filed joint returns for all four years. As you'll see from the returns, the Santorums' adjusted gross income went from about $659,000 in 2007, his first year out of the Senate, to $952,000 in 2008, to $1.1 million in 2009 and about $923,000 in 2010.

They paid about $167,000 in taxes in 2007, about $262,000 in 2008, $310,000 in 2009, and $263,000 in 2010.

There is depreciation on a condo property over the various years. The Santorums' charitable giving was a small percentage of his income each year.

In 2010, the couple reported some modest gains and losses from sales of Brandywine and United Health Services shares. Santorum had served on the UHS board until he declared his presidential campaign. And in 2008, they bought an Audi A6, which was claimed as a depreciated business expense.

UPDATE: And I was remiss in failing to mention that the Santorums claim several of their seven kids as dependants, a reminder of why their household income doesn't stretch perhaps as far as they'd like, although it's still a sizable annual income. However, the Santorums reported far less than either Gingrich or Romney in income - Romney in 2010 reported $21.7 million in income, while Gingrich and his wife had an adjusted gross income of over $3.1 million for the same year.

Also, their tax rate appears to be close to 29 percent in the highest-earning years, and closer to 25 percent for the lower ones. Romney made headlines when he said his effective rate was about 15 percent, which is being paid on income that is not wages, but from investments.

The Santorums' returns indicate they were self-prepared.

UPDATE II: Via POLITICO's Juana Summers, Santorum had this to say about his taxes tonight in North Dakota:

"I don't have wealth. I don't have investments. I don't have capital gains," said Santorum, who added that "most of the assets that I ended up building was paying down a mortgage on my house that went down in value." "So that's where most of my money went. But as far as the tax rates were concerned, (Romney) had dividend income, he had capital gains income and was taxed at 15 percent," he said. "I had ...income, which was taxed at a higher rate."



Maggie Haberman is senior political reporter for Politico.