Indiana Governor Mike Pence and his wife, Karen, earned adjusted gross income of $113,026 in 2015 and paid $8,956 in federal income taxes, according to a copy of the Republican vice presidential nominee's return that was released Friday — a move toward transparency that his running mate, Donald Trump, has yet to make.
The Pences paid an effective tax rate of 7.9 percent and donated about that same portion of their adjusted gross income to charity, the return shows. In all, the couple released 10 years' worth of their tax records, going back to the 2006 tax year. Over the decade, they earned a total of almost $1.6 million, paid total federal taxes of $142,343 and donated $119,500 to charity.
Trump has departed from 40 years of tradition for presidential candidates by refusing to release any of his tax returns for public inspection. The billionaire businessman has said he's under an audit by the Internal Revenue Service and won't release his returns until that audit is concluded — which may not happen before the Nov. 8 election. IRS officials have said there's no law preventing taxpayers from releasing their returns to the public, even if they're under audit.
Pence's spokesman, Marc Lotter, said the couple's comparatively modest returns reflect a stark contrast between them and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton.
"These tax returns clearly show that Mike and Karen Pence have paid their taxes, supported worthy causes, and, unlike the Clintons, the Pences have not profited from their years in public service," Lotter said in a news release.
Hillary Clinton, a former secretary of state and U.S. senator, has posted nine years of tax returns on her campaign website — and her campaign has said repeatedly that she and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, have made their returns public "for every year dating back to 1977." Clinton's running mate, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, has posted 10 years of returns.
The Clintons' returns show that they've made tens of millions of dollars in speaking fees and book royalties. In 2015, they reported adjusted gross income of $10.6 million — almost 94 times the amount the Pences reported.
But the Pences' returns, combined with a federal financial disclosure form he filed last month, also contrast with publicly information about Trump's finances — in terms of both their modesty and their simplicity. The vice presidential candidate had quipped that his tax documents would be a "quick read" depicting a middle-class life in public service. Pence, 57, and his wife have three children.
For example, the couple's 2015 income comprises mostly $109,807 in wages — which reflects Mike Pence's gubernatorial salary in Indiana. Trump in May filed a financial disclosure that claimed income of $557 million over a 16-and-a-half month period that began Jan. 1, 2015. (However, Trump's income disclosures listed such items as "rent," "golf-related revenue" and "land sales," which may conflate income with revenue — or his receipts before certain expenses.)
Trump has claimed he's worth more than $10 billion — a scope that can't be captured by the federal disclosure forms on which candidates value their assets. Those forms, which require candidates to apply value ranges to their assets, top out at $50 million for each. Others have questioned Trump's net-worth claims; Bloomberg News in July estimated it at $3 billion.
Pence last month filed a financial disclosure form that listed his most valuable asset as a "defined benefit pension" from Indiana state government worth between $500,000 and $1 million. He also listed liabilities: seven student loans worth between $95,000 and $280,000.
Tax specialists have said that if Trump releases his returns, he'd expose them to additional scrutiny — perhaps revealing issues that IRS auditors haven't discovered. Nonetheless, specialists say, there's little reason why he couldn't disclose his adjusted gross income, the total tax he has paid, how much he has given to charity and other details from the returns.
Trump's campaign released a letter from his tax lawyers in March that said his tax returns for the years 2002 through 2008 were no longer under any audit, but Trump hasn't released those documents.
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