Hillary and Bill Clinton earned $10.6 million a year ago, according to a tax filing released by her campaign Friday that sought to pressure presidential rival Donald Trump to disclose his tax returns.
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Hillary Clinton released her 2015 tax returns Friday, seeking to put additional pressure on Donald Trump to do the same.
“Here’s a pretty incredible fact: There is a non-zero chance that Donald Trump isn’t paying (asterisk) any (asterisk) taxes”, Clinton tweeted, just minutes after releasing her own returns.
In a statement, Trump’s campaign called the release of Clinton’s tax return, “an attempt at distraction and misdirection” to take media attention off of Clinton’s private email server.
Clinton on Thursday ran through numerous policies she has outlined over the a year ago to contrast herself with Trump, who has given far fewer details about his plans, as the presidential campaign heads toward the November 8 election.
Sitting behind Trump at his rally on Wednesday was former Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., who resigned in 2006 after allegations he sent sexually suggestive messages to former House pages.
Over the course of their careers the Clintons have published all of their tax returns since 1977 – Democrats repeatedly point to this as evidence of transparency on the part of the power couple.
But legendary investor and billionaire Warren Buffett earlier this month challenged the Republican presidential nominee to discuss their tax returns publicly.
That means their effective tax rate – a measure of their income tax burden – was 30.6% based on their adjusted gross income.
Former President Bill Clinton and his wife file tax returns jointly.
Trump has also faced questions about his charitable giving. IRS officials have said there’s no law preventing taxpayers from releasing their returns to the public, even if they’re under audit. The Clintons, who now live in Chappaqua, New York, paid an average effective federal tax rate of about 32 percent from 2007 to 2014 and an effective combined tax rate of approximately 40.5 percent.
That’s a dropoff from the couple’s 2014 earnings, when Clintons were criss-crossing the country getting huge fees for speaking engagements. Although it is not a requirement, recent presidential candidates have provided their returns or summaries for public scrutiny. They earned $313,441, and paid $63,626 in federal income taxes.
The returns show that the Clintons’ made about $10 million last year, which is a significant drop from the year before, when the duo reported a combined income of about $28 million.
“Donald Trump should release his tax returns”, on-screen text reads at the beginning of the video.
The returns became a campaign issue after the documents showed he paid an effective tax rate of 14.1 per cent, much lower than the typical rate for top earners.
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The 2015 tax documents from the Clintons don’t specify which businesses paid the Clintons to speak.
