Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his running mate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) released their 2019 federal and state tax returns today, hours before the former vice president meets face-to-face with President Trump in the first debate of the 2020 presidential race.
The release comes days after a bombshell New York Times investigation showed that Trump paid just $750 in federal income tax in both 2016 and 2017 and paid no taxes in 10 of the 15 previous years.
The newspaper detailed questionable tactics that Trump reportedly used to lower his tax bill over multiple years.
The returns show that Biden and his wife, Jill, reported $944,737 in taxable income last year and paid $299,346, or a 31% tax rate, in federal income taxes.
The former vice president’s income in 2019, when he spent most of the year as a presidential candidate, was substantially less than it was in 2017 and 2018.
He and his wife reported adjusted gross income of more than $11 million for 2017 and nearly $4.6 million for 2018.
The Bidens reported $14,700 in charitable contributions.
Harris and her husband Doug Emhoffe, a lawyer, reported an adjusted gross income of $3,095,590 in 2019 and owed taxes of $1,185,628, giving them an effective tax rate of about 38 percent.
Together, Harris and Emhoffe reported $35,390 in charitable donations for the year, their tax returns show.
Biden and Harris’s decision to release their 2019 tax returns came just before Biden prepares to take the stage in Cleveland, Ohio, for his first debate against Trump.
Speaking to reporters on a conference call today, Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s deputy campaign manager and communications director, cast the move as one intended to contrast Biden’s “honesty and transparency” with Trump’s years-long refusal to make his own tax returns public.
“Look, Trump’s tax returns and what we learned from that reporting I think reinforces what we already knew about Donald Trump, which is that he looks down on working people,” Bedingfield said.
“It reinforces how much of a choice there is in this campaign between Scranton and Park Avenue,” she added, referencing a line that Biden has used frequently in the days leading up to the debate.
The Times also found that for 10 of the previous 15 years, Trump paid no federal income taxes because his businesses lost hundreds of millions of dollars, which he was able to use to reduce his tax burden.
Trump called the Times’ expose “fake news” but did not directly dispute any of the figures contained in it.