White House releases tax returns for Biden, Harris

President Joe Biden’s income fell dramatically to $607,336 in 2020 as he dropped lucrative speaking engagements to campaign for the White House, but he still earned enough to pay the higher tax rates he’s proposed for wealthy people.

Biden and First Lady Jill Biden paid $157,414 in federal income tax, making their federal income tax rate 25.9%, according to their 2020 tax return, which was released Monday by the White House. They paid an additional $28,794 in Delaware state taxes and $433 to Virginia, where the first lady teaches.

The Bidens reported holding cash and investments totaling between $1.2 million and $2.88 million in a financial disclosure filed to the Office of Government Ethics ahead of Monday’s deadline for senior executive branch officials.

Biden was consistently at the bottom of net worth rankings for members of Congress during his years in the Senate, but cashed in after the vice presidency, making more $16.5 million from 2017 to 2019, according to according to tax returns previously released by his presidential campaign.

Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff also released their tax returns and financial disclosures on Monday. In 2020, Harris and Emhoff had a federal adjusted gross income of $1,695,225, most of which came from Emhoff’s work at law firm DLA Piper, where he was a partner. They paid $621,893 in federal income tax, a rate of 36.7%.

Higher taxes

Both Biden and Harris would end up paying higher tax rates under Biden’s American Family Plan based on their incomes this year. Harris and Emhoff would also be subject to an increase in the capital gains rates since they earned more than $1 million. Both couples would benefit from efforts among some House Democrats to repeal the $10,000 limit on deductions for state and local taxes, or SALT. The Bidens paid $90,289 in SALT while Harris and her husband paid $280,421, amounts they could fully write off if Democrats succeed in restoring the tax break that was curbed by former President Donald Trump.

In all, Biden will have released tax returns from 23 years, the White House said in a statement touting his continuation of “an almost uninterrupted tradition,” a knock against Trump, who bucked tradition — but not law — by declining to release his. Ahead of the documents’ release, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters their disclosure “should be expected by every president of the United States.”

Trump claimed he couldn’t release his returns because he was under audit by the Internal Revenue Service, but the agency said he was free to do so. During the campaign, Biden played up his voluntary disclosures, releasing his and Harris’s 2020 tax returns just before the first presidential debate in September.