FACT: Mitt Romney Says That The Reason He Won't Release His Tax Returns Has To Do With His Religion

Brett LoGiurato
Aug. 23, 2012, 4:09 PM

Business Insider:

Mitt Romney has said he won't release more than two years of tax returns because "you can never satisfy the opposition research team of the Obama organization."


But in a forthcoming interview with Parade magazine, Romney revealed a new reason why he's hesitant to release more returns: He does not want to make public his donations to the LDS Church.

Here's what Romney told Parade, according to The Salt-Lake Tribune:

"Our church doesn’t publish how much people have given. This is done entirely privately. One of the downsides of releasing one’s financial information is that this is now all public, but we had never intended our contributions to be known. It’s a very personal thing between ourselves and our commitment to our God and to our church."

Romney has released one year of tax returns and plans to release another before the election. He has come under fire from the Obama campaign and Democrats like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who charged that Romney did not pay taxes for 10 years.

His one year of released returns shows that Romney donated just less than $4.1 million to the LDS Church on an income of more than $40 million.

In bringing up a new reason for not releasing the returns, however, Romney may have thrust the subject back into the news cycle for the next few days as the Republican National Convention prepares to start up.