Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine Show New Tax Returns, Pressuring Donald Trump

World 16:37 13.08.2016

Hillary Clinton and her running mate, Tim Kaine, released a new batch of their own income tax returns on Friday, ratcheting up the pressure on her opponent, Donald J. Trump, to begin making public his own forms.

The newest tax return of Mrs. Clinton and her husband, former PresidentBill Clinton, showed an adjusted gross income of $10.6 million for 2015, a large drop from previous years but still enough to place them in the top 0.1 percent of American households.

They paid about $3.6 million in federal taxes for an effective tax rate of about 35 percent.

More than half their income came from speeches; Mrs. Clinton also earned $3 million from “Hard Choices,” her memoir of her years as secretary of state.

Mr. Kaine, the Virginia senator, and his wife, Anne Holton, who was Virginia’s secretary of education until she stepped down last month,reported income of $313,441 for 2015.

But aside from their earnings, the release was intended to put a spotlight on Mr. Trump’s refusal to release his own returns. Mike Pence, the Indiana governor and Mr. Trump’s running mate, also has not made public his tax data during the campaign.

Mrs. Clinton’s spokeswoman, Jennifer Palmieri, said in a statement the release sets a “stark contrast” with Mr. Trump, whom she accused of “hiding behind fake excuses.”

“He has failed to provide the public with the most basic financial information disclosed by every major candidate in the last 40 years,” she said. “What is he trying to hide?”

The Trump campaign would not discuss his tax returns, but in a statement on Friday, a spokesman, Jason Miller, called Mrs. Clinton’s disclosure an effort to shield her from questions about her emails when she was secretary of state and about what favors were sought by donors to her family’s foundation.

“This document release is nothing more than an attempt at distraction and misdirection by an individual who created and then purged an illegal private email server,” he said.

If Mr. Trump does not make public the details of his taxes, he would be the first major party presidential nominee to decline to do so since Richard M. Nixon. Mr. Trump is not required as a candidate to reveal his taxes, but he has submitted his personal financial disclosure form outlining his business interests, which he is obligated to file.

While Mr. Trump has cited an I.R.S. audit as his reason for not releasing his taxes, the agency said in a statement this year, “Nothing prevents individuals from sharing their own tax information.”

The lack of a disclosure of his taxes has opened Mr. Trump to attacks, first during the Republican primary campaign and now in the months leading to the Nov. 8 general election.

Critics have questioned whether Mr. Trump has not released his taxes because his reported earnings could be underwhelming in comparison to his own statements about his net worth. Others have suggested that the tax documents would reveal business interests that could be problematic if he were elected.

There have also been questions about how much Mr. Trump has paid in taxes over the years, whether he in factpaid any federal taxes some years, and whether he has followed through on his charitable pledges.

Given the expansive web of tax breaks available to real estate developers, tax experts say it would not be surprising if Mr. Trump paid little or no income taxes some years, even as he amassed billions of dollars in wealth.

The Clintons’ income has also brought scrutiny, and their returns hint at how much they have relied on their star power and government connections to catapult them into the ranks of the super rich. Though they were once seen as relatable to average Americans, polls suggest that many voters now see them as out of touch.

Their 2015 income, while less than half what they earned the previous year, put them well above the $2 million threshold for the top 0.1 percent of taxpayers, according to an analysis of federal income tax data by Emmanuel Saez, an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley. They were within $1 million of reaching the 0.01 percent threshold — or the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent.

In recent years they have collected tens of millions of dollars in fees for speeches, including some delivered abroad and others sponsored by financial institutions.

Mrs. Clinton has faced calls to release the transcripts of her speeches, particularly from the three she gave for Goldman Sachs for a total of $675,000. Her primary opponent, Senator Bernie Sanders, and Mr. Trump have used those speeches to portray Mrs. Clinton as being chummy with Wall Street.

In 2015, before she officially began her campaign and stopped giving speeches, she earned $1.5 million in speaking fees. Her husband earned $5.25 million from speeches last year.

According to Mrs. Clinton’s personal financial disclosure filed in May, she and her husband made more than two dozen speeches in 2015 for $150,000 and up. Mr. Clinton earned $225,000 for a February speech sponsored by UBS Wealth Management, for example, and Mrs. Clinton gave a speech for eBay in March for $315,000. Mr. Clinton also earned $1.7 million from his consulting business, WJC L.L.C., after it brought in more than $6 million the year before, according to the tax returns.

The financial disclosure from earlier this year said that two sources of consulting income were Varkey GEMS Foundation, an international charityfounded by Sunny Varkey, an education entrepreneur, and Laureate Education, a network of for-profit schools.

These financial ties — including the past speeches, business endeavors and well as donor relationships with the Clinton Foundation — have already attracted critics who say they include inherent conflicts of interest and could be problematic under a Clinton administration.

From 2007 to 2015, according to returns released Friday and previously, the Clintons made a total adjusted gross income of $150 million and paid $48 million in federal taxes. In the same period they gave $16 million to charity, including $1 million last year that went mostly to their family foundation.

The Clintons’ other income last year included $24,932 in interest, $84,358 in mutual fund dividends and $226,297 in pension payments from the federal and Arkansas governments.

Their deductions included $1.4 million in state income taxes and $98,244 in property taxes on their homes in Chappaqua, N.Y., and Washington. They also wrote off $41,040 in mortgage interest.

 

 

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