In the same week that Hillary Clinton released her 2015 tax returns Donald Trump essentially showed everyone a note from his lawyer explaining why the billionaire isn’t allowed (by the lawyer) to do the same.
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According to the filings, Bill and Hillary Clinton earned $10.7 million in 2015 and paid roughly $3.6 million in federal taxes.
Clinton’s running mate, Tim Kaine, also release the past ten years of his tax returns on Friday. Total income for Kaine and his wife Anne: $313,000.
The real estate mogul’s campaign said that Clinton’s move to release her tax returns “is nothing more than an attempt at distraction and misdirection”.
The 2015 return also showed the Clintons forked over $3.2 million in federal income taxes, which is an effective tax rate of about 34 percent.
The IRS has said Trump is free to release his returns. Asked specifically about US citizens, Trump said he didn’t like that President Barack Obama and others wanted to try them in traditional courts rather than military commissions at Guantanamo Bay.
Democrats suspect Mr Trump is holding back because his tax return might show he earns less than what he says, pays little or no tax, or gives a negligible amount to charity.
For presidential candidates, releasing tax returns is a proxy for transparency. Nearly all of those donations went to the Clinton Family Foundation, a fund that serves as the vehicle for the couple’s charitable giving that is different from the Clinton Foundation, whose activities have been heavily scrutinised – most recently over email leaks that suggest an appropriately close connection between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department during the time Mrs Clinton was Secretary of State. They paid an effective federal tax rate of 20.3 percent in 2015.
“Now before he tweets about how he’s really the one who will put America first in trade”, Clinton said, “Let’s remember where Trump makes many of his products”.
The Clintons have disclosed tax returns for every year since 1977, in part due to laws requiring public officials release returns. “What is he trying to hide?”.
“I would say they could be tried there”, Trump said. Between January 2014 to April 2015, Clinton raked in a cool $5 million for her book “Hard Choices”, according to a campaign finance report released earlier this year.
The Clintons have been criticized for collecting what are perceived as exorbitant fees related to public speaking events.
Clinton’s strategy borrows from President Barack Obama’s winning playbook against Mitt Romney in 2012.
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Clinton frequently mentions Trump’s returns as a way of underscoring how his economic plans would benefit his personal interests and questioning whether he’s as wealthy as he claims.
