It turns out the Clintons have been very charitable in their giving. The ironic part is that their own foundation was the greatest beneficiary of their philanthropy.
CNBC reports:
Clintons made $10.6 million in 2015, paid federal rate of 34%Hillary and Bill Clinton released their 2015 tax returns on Friday, showing they paid $3.6 million in taxes on adjusted gross income of $10.6 million.The release appeared to be aimed at drawing renewed attention to Donald Trump’s refusal to release his own tax records.The Clintons deducted $2.24 million last year, and paid an effective federal tax rate of 34.2 percent and an effective combined tax rate of 43.2 percent. They gave 9.8 percent of their adjusted gross income to charity, according to a campaign release.Of the the $1,042,000 the Clintons gave to charity as listed on their return, $1 million of that went to the Clinton Family Foundation. The other $42,000 went to Desert Classic Charities.
That’s a pretty good racket. Charitable donations to your own family foundation.
Hillary Clinton thinks releasing this information has given her leverage to criticize Trump.
That’s rich coming from someone who won’t release the transcripts of her Wall Street speeches.
This is all straight out of the 2012 playbook. As you may recall, Harry Reid spent every waking moment accusing Mitt Romney of being a tax cheat.
Rush Limbaugh had a good time commenting on the way CNN framed the story of the Clintons’ returns:
Clinton News Network Hilariously Reports on Clinton Tax ReturnsHillary Clinton has released — well, the Clintons have released — their tax returns. Some conflicting reporting. The first report was a 42% combined tax rate. Now they’re saying it’s effectively 30%. But here’s the deal: 96% of Hillary’s charitable donations went to the Clinton Foundation! (laughing) Yeah, 96%, they donated to themselves, and CNN just said, “Oh, look how much they give to charity! Aren’t they so wonderful?” Yeah.You know, it was the funniest thing to listen to CNN talk about the Clintons’ tax returns. The infobabe was saying, “You know, Wolf, it’s really, really striking here that Clinton’s income in 2014 was nearly $30 million, and mysteriously, Wolf, their income last year dropped to only $14 million. That’s really, really strange, Wolf, I wonder. And then, Wolf, you know, 60% of the Clinton income came from Bill Clinton doing speeches.” And I’m looking at this infobabe and thinking, “Do you think we’re idiots here? You don’t think we understand that they could turn their income spigot off the year before she’s gonna run for president and do it on purpose?” The woman that made $20 million in two years doing speeches? And then they were raving about how much money Hillary gives to charity. They didn’t tell us that 96% of Hillary’s charitable donations went to the Clinton Foundation. (laughing) I mean, you have to marvel at it.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY