So Hillary and Bill have released their tax return for 2015. I took a look at it and beside the fact that they made $10 million mainly being paid for giving speeches there were a couple of things that made me say WTF.
To start with neither of them are collecting social security. Maybe they have elected not to so they won’t have to show on their tax return what they would be expected to live on if they didn’t have all this other income. Or maybe they don’t want anyone to know how much they would be getting from Social Security on top of their enormous self earnings.
I’ve done tax returns for people who have incomes in excess of $100K and their itemized deductions are severely limited. The Clinton’s managed to make over $10 million and still got to use 88% of their itemized deductions to reduce their taxable income. I’m not saying or implying that they did anything wrong… or that they cheated somehow. I’m sure they are just crafting their income in a way that they can take advantage of every tax break available to them.
Which brings me to their charitable contributions… 96% or $1,000,000 of which was given to the Clinton Family Foundation. (Which is separate from the Clinton Foundation that is coming under scrutiny for ‘possible’ inappropriate activity while Hillary was a member of the US Senate and during her time as Secretary of State.) Looking at the Clinton Family Foundation financials shows that in 2014 they took in $172 million and spent 20% or $35 million on actual charity programs, which makes me wonder why the Clintons felt the need to give their own foundation a million dollars. Maybe in 2015 they needed an influx of cash so they could give raises to the dozens of employees making six figure incomes. I’m also sure that much of the millions spent on travel and what are called program expenses can be attributed to and for the benefit of those directors with the last name of Clinton.
For someone who is beating us over the head that the rich don’t pay their fair share it sure looks to me like they do an awfully good job of not paying anymore tax than is absolutely necessary and they use the 501 charity rules extensively to their advantage. Not any different than the evil rich that they are always demonizing.