San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Bidens release tax returns as deadline nears
WASHINGTON — President Biden and his wife reported earning $610,702 in 2021, almost the same amount the couple said they earned the year before, according to copies of their tax returns made public by the White House.
The release Friday of their returns — which comes just days before Monday’s deadline for Americans to file their taxes with the IRS — shows that Biden and the first lady, Jill Biden, paid $150,439 in federal income tax, for an effective rate of 24.6%. Most of the money Biden and his wife earned came from his $400,000 annual salary for being president and two pensions. He also reported almost $62,000 from an S corporation controlled by the Bidens, which received money in 2021 from two publishing houses, Simon & Schuster and Flatiron Books. An S corporation is a small-business designation that allows business income, credits and deductions to pass through to shareholders.
The president and first lady reported donations of $17,394 to 10 charities.
Presidents have regularly made their tax returns public since Richard Nixon began doing it during his tenure. The lone exception was former President Donald Trump, who refused to reveal his returns and fought fierce battles with Congress and the courts to keep the returns private. The New York Times obtained tax documents for the former president in 2020. They showed that Trump paid just $750 in federal income taxes the year he won the presidency and another $750 during the first year that he was in office. The documents revealed that Trump paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years — largely because he reported losing much more money than he made.
The Bidens also paid $30,765 in Delaware income taxes, according to the documents. Jill Biden also filed a Virginia income tax return showing that she paid $2,721 in income tax in that state, where she is a professor at Northern Virginia Community College.
The White House also released the tax returns for Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff.
The couple reported earning $1,655,563 and paying $523,371 in federal income tax, a rate of 31.6%. They also paid $120,517 in California income tax and $2,044 in New York income tax, according to the White House. Emhoff, who is an entertainment lawyer, also paid $54,441 in District of Columbia income tax.
The second couple contributed $22,100 to charity in 2021, according to the returns.