White House releases show Biden’s book royalties fell sharply last year
Joe Biden’s personal finances changed little between 2022 and the previous year, though his book royalties fell sharply, according to White House financial disclosure reports released on Monday.
Biden earned between $2,500 and $5,000 in book royalties in 2022, down from $30,000 a year earlier. He also earned less than $3,000 in “speaking and writing engagements”, from close to $30,000 last year, the disclosures show.
The disclosures, which included Jill Biden’s income, showed her book royalties also dropped. She earned between $5,000- $15,000 in 2022 compared with $15,000- $50,000 from book sales a year earlier.
The report also showed the couple’s assets were worth between $1.09m and $2.57m.
They owe between $250,000 and $500,000 on a mortgage on their Delaware home, plus between $45,000 and $150,000 on other loans.
In April, the Bidens released their federal tax return, showing the couple earned nearly $580,000 last year and paid an effective federal income tax rate of 23.8%. The Bidens reported an income of almost $611,000 in 2021, about $4,000 more than they made in 2020, according to tax documents released by the White House.
The federal tax return for Kamala Harris and her husband, Douglas Emhoff, also released in April, showed $457,000 in income.
The vice-president earned just over $41,000 in royalties for her 2019 memoir and $40,209 from her 2019 children’s book, according to the disclosure forms released by the White House on Monday.
Biden receives a $400,000 salary as the US president while Jill Biden earned $82,335 as an English professor at Northern Virginia Community College. Harris receives a salary of $235,100 as vice-president.
The remainder of their income is drawn from investment interest, pensions, annuities, distributions from retirement accounts and social security as well as a corporation that collects their book royalties, according to the joint tax return.
The couple’s annual income has dropped in recent years, falling by more than a third when Biden ran for president in 2020 from almost $1m in 2019 to $607,336 in 2020. Harris and her husband saw their earnings dramatically decline from $3.1m in 2019 to $1.7m in 2020.