Remember when Mitt Romney said his speaker fees didn't amount to much money?
“It’s probably closer to the 15 percent rate than anything,” Mr. Romney said. “Because my last 10 years, I’ve — my income comes overwhelmingly from some investments made in the past, whether ordinary income or earned annually. I got a little bit of income from my book, but I gave that all away. And then I get speaker’s fees from time to time, but not very much.”
Based on disclosure statements that were available at the time, we thought the amount of speaker's fees that he'd received was $362,000. It turns out the real number is $480,115.
In 2010, Mr. Romney actually filed two Schedule C’s: one for his speaker’s fees and the other for his service as a director of Marriott International. His speaker fees amounted to $528,871 in 2010, but commissions and advertising costs reduced that income to $480,115.
So to Mitt Romney, $480,115 per year is "not very much" money. Most Americans disagree. In our weekly poll, we asked whether people thought a $370,000 annual salary was "a lot of money." 81 percent said they thought it was. Just 15 percent disagreed. And you can count Mitt Romney as being in that 15 percent.