Eliot Spitzer earned more than $4M last year

New York City comptroller candidate Eliot Spitzer -- scion of his family's vast real estate business -- earned nearly $4.3 million last year, according to tax returns the campaign let reporters see Thursday.

The income includes more than a million dollars from CNN -- paid even after the network ended his stint there -- and millions more from the family business. He paid nearly half his income in taxes.

Spitzer's campaign, after weeks of declining to do so, revealed the last two years of tax returns -- but stopped short of a full five years, which his opponent for the Democratic nomination, Scott Stringer, did and called on Spitzer to do. (Stringer and his wife earned $217,796.)

In each of the disclosed years, Spitzer's income included the CNN pay -- at least $2 million in total -- as well as a $180,000 annual salary from the family's business, and more than $2 million in proceeds from his share of the business' residential apartments.

He earned less than $5,000 from teaching at the City University of New York and about $50,000 as a speaker, consultant and writer. He paid about $60,000 to household help.

Spitzer's wife, Silda Wall Spitzer, earned nearly $250,000 in 2011 working at a financial firm, but last year earned about $125,000 at a different one. Published reports have said the couple are living apart.

The Spitzer campaign allowed reporters, one at a time, to review the tax returns at his family business' Fifth Avenue office, which doubles as his campaign headquarters. An aide made sure no photographs were taken.

Spitzer in 2006 told The New York Sun: "I reveal my tax returns every year. I think it's the right thing to do. I've done it since I was running."

In a statement, Stringer spokeswoman Audrey Gelman said: "The old Eliot Spitzer supported stringent financial disclosure. Just as we've seen on his decision to abandon campaign spending limits he once supported, it's increasingly clear that Eliot Spitzer believes there are two standards in public life -- one for him, and one for everyone else."

Spitzer spokesman Hari Sevugan retorted: "We are glad that media outlets are taking Eliot up on his offer to report on his full tax returns. As they'll see, he paid 49 percent of his income in taxes. Mr. Stringer will have to come up with another irrelevant line of attack."