Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz have released summary pages of their tax returns for the last few years as they put pressure on Donald Trump to do the same.
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Marco Rubio released summaries of his last five years of tax filings on Saturday, revealing him to be a candidate with a senator’s steady annual income of $176,000 who reaped repeated windfalls from book deals.
The returns show that Cruz and his wife reported more than $5.2 million in income in those years and paid an average effective tax rate of 37.6 percent.
Rubio’s returns show his family’s adjusted gross income was $335,561 in 2014, the most recent year he made available.
Rubio’s campaign said on its website that the family has earned $2.29 million since 2010, paying a total of $526,092 in taxes on that income.
Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Christina Freundlich rapped Rubio on Saturday evening for releasing only the first two pages of his returns.
“In addition, it’s possible Trump has been a significant donor to left-wing organizations, such as Planned Parenthood, which would seriously undermine his claim to be pro-life”, the Cruz release states.
“If Marco wants to release the complete things for the recent years I’m happy to do so as well and I would certainly encourage Donald Trump to do it, but we just did it to match what the other candidates are doing”, Cruz said. Coupled with prior returns from 2000 through 2009, which Rubio released when he ran for the U.S. Senate in Florida, the documents raise questions, Schenkman said.
With both Ted Cruz and Rubio having pledged to release their own returns – an invariably unpleasant rite of passage for every major party nominee since 1976 – Trump will soon stand alone among the major Republican candidates in having not yet produced them. Democrats and some Republicans quickly pounced on Rubio for the limited release.
Mr Rubio released part of his 2010-14 returns, adding to 10 years of tax documents he had previously made public.
Since Rubio joined the Senate in 2010, his family income has ranged from a low of $183,872 in 2010 to a high of $929,439 in 2012, according to the couple.
In addition to the income for himself and his wife Heidi, a former Goldman Sachs executive, the forms show Cruz has a minimum net worth of about $1.7 million – which includes investments in mutual funds, retirement plans and corporate securities.
About 500 miles away in Kennesaw, Georgia, Rubio had a different take on Trump’s appearance saying he should sue the makeup man. In typical Trump fashion, these tweets merely ripped on Romney on a personal level and didn’t actually address the “bombshell” accusation – Trump has found great success with his rabid band of followers this election season by avoiding substance and sticking to bombastic insults, grandiose claims and plenty of superlatives.
Rubio spokesman Alex Conant told reporters the campaign “won’t rule out providing more information in the future”. The campaign published joint federal tax returns from Rubio and his wife, Jeanette. Tax returns provide precise information about a candidate’s income as well as other financial details.
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The release of the two candidates’ tax filings came after Trump said in Thursday’s GOP debate that his returns have been the subject of audits for at least a dozen consecutive years.
