Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden and his running mate Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., released their 2019 federal and state tax returns Tuesday, The Hill reported.
The timing of the release appeared to be a strategic move, coming just a few hours before the first debate with President Donald Trump in Cleveland and less than two days after The New York Times published an investigatory article showing that Trump paid only $750 in federal income tax in both 2016 and 2017 and no taxes at all in 10 of the 15 previous years, according to CNBC.
Biden and his wife reported an adjusted gross income of $985,233 and paid $299,346 in taxes, for an effective tax rate of about 30%.
Before he started running for president, Biden' income was substantially more, with he and his wife reporting adjusted gross income of more than $11 million for 2017 and almost $4.6 million for 2018.
Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff, a lawyer, reported an adjusted gross income of $3,095,590 for last year and owed $1,185,628 in taxes, giving them an effective tax rate of about 38%.
Kate Bedingfield, Biden's deputy campaign manager and communications director, told reporters that the timing of the release was meant to contrast Biden's "honesty and transparency" with Trump's refusal over many years to make his own tax returns public.
"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.