Romney discloses taxes and criticises Gingrich

Stung by a series of setbacks, Mitt Romney on Tuesday heeded calls to release tax documents detailing his vast fortune and fired back at surging Republican White House rival Newt Gingrich.

The release of the tax documents to US media followed another fiery debate late Monday in which Romney — trailing in recent polls — painted Mr Gingrich as a career Washington “influence peddler” unfit for the White House.

The documents show that Mr Romney, a former venture capitalist and one of the richest people to ever seek the presidency, paid some $6 million in the past two years on more than $40 million of income, almost all from investments.

Investments are typically taxed at 15 per cent — the rate Mr Romney paid — while wages are taxed up to 35 per cent, part of a lopsided revenue system that Democratic President Barack Obama has argued unfairly favours the wealthy.

Mr Romney’s critics, both Democrats and Republicans, have accused the on-again, off-again frontrunner of pillaging companies and destroying jobs during his time at equity firm Bain Capital.

The former Massachusetts governor has instead presented himself as a managerial wizard who turned around failing firms and created tens of thousands of jobs, saying his business acumen makes him an ideal presidential candidate.

But the resurgent Gingrich — fresh off a major win in South Carolina on Saturday and leading in the polls — pressed the attack at Monday’s debate days before delegate-rich Florida holds a key vote that could confirm his rise.

Mr Romney fought back, attacking Gingrich’s work for state-backed mortgage lender Freddie Mac, which many Republicans blame for the housing bubble and the ensuing recession, which hit Florida particularly hard.

“I don’t think we can possibly retake the White House if the person who’s leading our party is the person who was working for the chief lobbyist of Freddie Mac,” Romney said.

“Freddie Mac was paying speaker Gingrich $1.6 million at the same time Freddie Mac was costing the people of Florida millions of dollars.”

Mr Gingrich, shedding his trademark bombast, tried to rise above the fray, dismissing the charges as the “worst kind of trivial politics.”