After weeks of pressure from the media and the Obama campaign, the Clintons have released their tax returns from 2000-2007. If you’re a financial voyeur, you can read them all in pdf form here.
Over the last eight years, the Clintons have made roughly $109 million, have paid roughly $34 million in taxes, and have donated over $10 million to charity.
The Friday afternoon news dump is usually used to catch the media and its readership/viewership off-guard: nobody writes, reads, or watches much news going into a weekend. But these tax returns have been a hot topic in the presidential race for ages. Much scrutiny will be applied to the sources of the Clintons income over the next several days, primarily because of questions about whether Bill Clinton’s worldwide business dealings allow nefarious interests to try and curry favor with the husband of a potential future president.
The Clintons asked for an extension on their 2007 taxes, meaning we don’t know what the former President has been up to in the last year. The campaign did list some sources of income, including $150,200 from Senator Clinton’s salary and $186,600 from President Clinton’s pension. Less transparently, there is also $2,750,000 from unspecified “partnership income” and $400,000 from “advisor income” from a sketchy company called InfoUSA.
On this issue, the Clinton campaign does have a legitimate gripe with the media: reporters have not been good about presuming innocence. That said, the campaign fueled speculation about the tax returns’ contents by not releasing them, despite endless calls for them to do so, and not providing a reason for why.
Note: Prior to this, the last time the Clintons released their tax returns (which has been the norm in presidential politics since the 1970s) was in 2000 when they made $416,039. They’ve certainly seen an income uptick.
