Clinton’s tax release: No whining
by Tom Sullivan
Tax records released this week show that since leaving the White House the Clintons have done pretty well for themselves. Jonathan Allen explains at Vox, comparing Hillary’s finances to Jeb!’s:
Friday’s disclosures make clear that Clinton has made a lot more money than Bush. She’s paid $57.5 million in taxes since 2007, well more than the $38 million Bush made between 1981 and 2013. In 2013, the most lucrative year for which he has provided information, Bush made $7.36 million. That year, the Clintons pulled in $27.47 million.
They also earned $28.3 million in 2014, paying an effective tax rate that year of 45.8 percent in federal, state and local taxes — partly due to the tax joys of living in New York. Their biggest source of income in recent years has been paid speeches, a fact reinforced by Friday’s first-time disclosure of $22.3 million in earnings from lecture-circuit stops in 2013.
For his part, Jeb! has been paying “roughly 36 percent” in a state with no income tax, and to my recollection has not been gauche enough to whine about it, or else he just learned from his father’s “read my lips” #fail. Jeb! has in fact refused to sign Grover Norquist’s no-tax pledge.
Republicans will no doubt mine Hillary Clinton’s tax records for anything they can make seem suspicious, or fuss over what they claim is missing in her email releases. But what’s really missing is the whining over what she pays. Clinton wants people in her tier to pay more. She wants to close the carried interest loophole and push for implementing “the Buffett Rule, which makes sure millionaires don’t pay lower rates than their secretaries.” Those making over $1 million per year would pay at least 30 percent of their incomes in tax. Plus, in her attack on “quarterly capitalism,” Clinton wants to change how capital gains are taxed. Vox continues:
“We hear very different principles from the Republican candidates running for president. They want to give me another tax cut I don’t need instead of putting middle class families first,” Clinton said in a statement accompanying her release. “Families like mine that reap rewards from our economy have a responsibility to pay our fair share.”
None of what Clinton wants to do with the tax code is particularly radical. But Republicans, most of whom have signed a pledge to never raise new taxes, have given her a lot of room to contrast with them.
If she does, Clinton will have to do it in a more accessible way than she has so far if she expects Average Joe to stop genuflecting before the grousing rich. Unlike Clinton, the 1% always have some mighty fine whine about what they pay in taxes. No tax rate short of Somalia’s will stop them from whining about it. They won’t be satisfied until We the People are paying them for making a profit.
