The White House on Monday distanced President Obama from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s comments that GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney hasn’t paid taxes in a decade.

White House press secretary Jay Carney said on Monday that Reid (D-Nev.) “speaks for himself” and had spoken on the issue without any guidance from Team Obama.

“He certainly speaks for himself,” Carney said, adding that Obama hasn’t expressed an opinion on Reid’s recent comments.

But Carney said Reid’s comments speak to a “broader question” about the president’s views on income taxes, saying that a “tradition” which “has been in place since 1968 of candidates for the president releasing multiple years of their tax returns is an important one.”

“You know, it’s not always every candidate’s favorite part of the process, but it’s a tradition that’s important,” Carney said. “It’s valuable to the American people as they decide who should be president. So that’s why the president has put forward his financial information, his tax returns when he was a candidate, and believes that that’s an important tradition.

In an interview last week, Reid claimed a Bain Capitol investor told him Romney had not paid any taxes in 10 years. That’s why, Reid said, Romney has refused to release more than the roughly two years’ worth of tax returns he’s already shared.

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