Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum has released his tax returns for the four years since he left the U.S. Senate.
The returns show Santorum's income rising during most of the period between 2007 and 2011, Politico reported. Santorum, who filed joint returns with his wife, Karen, paid $167,000 in federal taxes in 2007, which rose to $262,000 in 2008 and $310,000 in 2009, dipping to $263,000 in 2010.
Santorum's income, $923,000 in 2010, while far above the U.S. average, was less than that reported by Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. Romney reported $21.7 that year, and Gingrich $3.1 million.
Neither Romney nor Gingrich has yet released returns for multiple years.
Santorum also had a higher effective tax rate than Romney, who has acknowledged paying about 15 percent because his income comes from dividends and capital gains. The Santorums paid between 25 percent and 29 percent of their income in taxes between 2007 and 2011.
"I don't have wealth. I don't have investments. I don't have capital gains," Santorum said Wednesday during a campaign stop in North Dakota. "Most of the assets that I ended up building was paying down a mortgage on my house that went down in value."
