Talk about timing.
The day after a blockbuster New York Times investigation revealed President Donald Trump paid just $750 in 2017 and 2016 — and avoided taxes altogether for decades — Joe Biden and Kamala Harris dropped their 1040s for 2019.
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The verdict: Joe and Jill Biden paid nearly $300,000 in taxes on adjusted gross income of $985,233. Jill Biden was employed as a school teacher. Kamala Harris and husband Doug Emhoff, a lawyer, paid $1 million on $3.1 million in 2019 adjusted gross income.
“This is a historic level of transparency meant to give the American people faith once again that their leaders will look out for them and not their own bottom line,” said Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s deputy campaign manager.
The issue of Trump’s tax avoidance is sure to come up at the first of three presidential debates tonight in Cleveland. Trump broke 40 years of tradition by refusing to release his tax returns when he ran for president in 2015, claiming he could not because they were “under audit.”
That audit appears to be a $72.9 million refund he claimed after not paying taxes at all in 10 of the 15 years the Times examined.
The Times’ report, which covered more than two decades of tax-return data, did not include Trump’s personal returns for 2018 or 2019.
An audit wouldn’t preclude Trump from releasing his tax information. Biden, meanwhile, has released 22 years of tax records during his time in office, according to the Wall Street Journal.
