Hillary Clinton released eight years of tax returns Friday and hit her potential 2016 Republican presidential opponents in the process.
In a lengthy statement and on her campaign website, Clinton detailed that she and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, paid more than $43 million in federal taxes from 2007 to 2014, over $13 million in state taxes and donated nearly $15 million to charity over the same period.
Clinton said she and her husband paid an effective federal tax rate of 35.7 percent and a combined federal, state, and local effective rate of 45.8 percent last year. They also donated 10.8% of their income, Clinton said, to charity. It is not clear how much of that money went to The Clinton Foundation, their family’s philanthropic organization, as the tax returns themselves were not immediately made available to the public.
Clinton aides say the documents will be posted online Friday night.
“We’ve come a long way from my days going door-to-door for the Children’s Defense Fund and earning $16,450 as a young law professor in Arkansas — and we owe it to the opportunities America provides,” Clinton wrote in the release.
The Clinton campaign posted the tax returns to their website on Friday afternoon, along with an itemized list of all the paid speeches Clinton and her husband delivered in 2013.
With this release, the campaign says 38 years of Clinton tax returns have been available to the press over the course of her career, dating back to 1977. Not all of the tax returns are currently online, but a campaign official said the tax forms were made available during the Clinton’s first run at elected office.
By comparison, campaign aides were quick to note, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush released 33 years of tax returns last month.
Clinton, who has been more willing to go after Republicans of late, used the release of her tax documents to tout her tax principles and knock Republicans.
The former secretary of state said that as president she would simply the tax code for “middle class families and small businesses” and close loopholes on top earners. She also revisited past proposals she has made, including raising the short-term capital gains tax on top earners.
“I want more Americans to have the chance to work hard and get ahead, just like we did. And reforming the tax code can help,” she wrote before noting “we hear very different principles from the Republican candidates running for President.”
“They want to give me another tax cut I don’t need instead of putting middle class families first,” Clinton wrote before hitting Bush and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio by name. “Jeb Bush supports eliminating or dramatically lowering capital gains taxes for wealthy investors with no incentives for long-term holding. Marco Rubio’s plan would cut taxes for households making more than $3 million a year by almost $240,000 — more than four times the earnings of a typical family. That’s a budget-busting give-away to the super-wealthy and the sort of bad economics you’re likely to get from any of the Republican candidates.”
