Hillary Clinton has released her 2015 tax returns, which show the Democratic presidential nominee and her husband had US$10.75 million ($14.94m) in income that year and paid an effective federal tax rate of 34.2 per cent. Hillary made almost $1.5 million in income from speaking appearances, while Bill took in $5.25 million that way.
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Clinton and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, paid an effective federal income tax rate of 34.2 percent and an effective state and local income tax rate of 9 percent in 2015, with a total income of about 10.7 million USA dollars, according to her campaign.
“Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine continue to set the standard for financial transparency”, Clinton campaign aide Jennifer Palmieri said.
Departing from 40 years of tradition for presidential candidates, Trump has so far refused to release any of his tax returns for public inspection. Trump has said that he’s under an audit by the Internal Revenue Service and won’t release his returns until that audit is concluded – which may not happen before the November 8 election.
A Trump campaign statement released on Friday responding to the Clinton’s release avoided the topic of Trump’s returns, and Trump has previously said that an IRS audit prevented him from releasing his returns, though as the New York Times points out, that’s not actually true, according to theIRS. All major US presidential candidates in modern history have released their returns.
Clinton’s tax returns have been made public, in some form, every year since 1977.
Hillary also made $3 million in proceeds from her book Hard Choices. They also gave more than one million dollars to charity. A lower income would question his image as a successful businessman.
However, the disclosure of Clinton’s wealth, mainly coming from highly-paid speeches delivered to financial institutions, might also raise concerns about whether she could really defend interests of middle-class families and take a tough stance against Wall Street as she has promised. On Friday she raised the issue during an economic speech in MI.
On Thursday Trump’s special counsel, Michael Cohen, told CNN he would not allow Trump to release them until the audits were complete.
The Clintons’ income puts them well within the ranks of the top 0.1 percent of Americans, though they pay a higher tax rate than many of their elite peers, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, based on 2013 data.
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Federal tax rates have become an issue in the presidential election.
