Hillary Clinton on Friday did something every major party’s presidential nominee has done since 1976, with the sole exception of the man she is now running against: She released her tax returns.
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Mrs Clinton and her husband Bill, the former president, reported $10.6 million (AU$13.9 million) in income for 2015, and paid $3.6 million (AU$4.7 million) in federal income tax. Of that number, however, $1 million went to their own Clinton Family Foundation, a separate endeavor from the Clinton Foundation.
No, this was about Donald Trump. Her campaign website has links to the returns since 2007 and notes that the records of their income have been public since 1977. What’s wrong?” The “something wrong” with Trump’s own returns could be anything, his critics allege: “that he doesn’t make that much money; that he hasn’t donated much to charity, despite his claims of generosity; that his businesses could link him with unsavory actors, though CNN recently debunked a claim his returns could reveal ties to Russian oligarchs; or that he hasn’t paid very much in taxes at all-something he’s hinted at in the past.
Clinton delivered six paid speeches in 2015, including one to the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce.
As things stand, the Republican nominee seems set to become the first presidential candidate in decades not to release their return.
The video also included footage of Trump saying that tax forms should be released-but he was clearly not talking about himself.
The returns reveal where the Clintons’ money came from past year, most of which Hillary Clinton spent on the trail after kicking off her campaign in April 2015.
Income is taxed up to 39.6 percent by the federal government, while capital gains are only taxed at 20 percent rate for people in the highest federal income tax bracket.
In 2015, Kaine and his wife, Anne Holton, reported $313,441 in total income, the vast majority of that coming from their respective salaries, Kaine as a USA senator and Holton as Virginia’s secretary of education. Over the last decade, the couple has donated 7.5 percent of their income to charity, the campaign said, and paid an effective tax rate of 25.6 percent past year.
But the 104-page document he released only paints a partial picture of his finances and do not include his tax rate or his charitable giving as well as other pertinent financial information. It also quotes Trump himself, from a 2012 interview about former candidate Mitt Romney’s returns: “If you didn’t see the tax returns, you would think there is nearly, like, something wrong”.
Two tax appeals that Trump filed in the 1990s, both of which he lost, showed a similar numbers, The Daily Beast reported in June.
When asked what his tax rate was exactly, Trump responded, “It’s none of your business”.
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“The way I see it, if you’re going to give a speech and get $225,000, it must be a really brilliant speech”, Sanders told a crowd at the University of IL in March. “But I fight very hard to pay as little tax as possible”.
