It’s April 15th. Time for prominent politicians to make their tax returns public.
The AP reports:
President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle, millionaires from his best-selling books, made $2.7 million last year and paid just under one-third of their adjusted income in federal taxes.
…Obama earned $139,204 as a Democratic senator from Illinois last year before leaving his seat after winning the November election. Michelle Obama received a salary of $62,709 from the University of Chicago Hospitals, where she was an executive.
The couple’s total federal tax came to $855,323. That was 32 percent of their adjusted gross income of $2,656,902.
…
They reported contributing $172,050 to charity last year, including $25,000 each to the CARE international relief agency and the United Negro College Fund.
They gave a total of $1,400 to five churches. In contrast to 2007, they gave nothing to the Trinity United Church of Christ.
And the Bidens?
Vice President Joe Biden and his wife Jill also released their tax returns today. They filed their returns jointly and reported an adjusted gross income of $269,256.
The couple’s primary source of income came from Biden’s Senate salary, Widener University, and Delaware Technical & Community College where Jill Biden was a teacher. The Bidens paid $46,952 in federal income taxes and $11,164 in Delaware income taxes.
They donated $1,885 to charity. “The charitable donations claimed by the Bidens on their tax returns are not the sum of their annual contributions to charity,” the White House said in a release, “They donate to their church, and they contribute to their favorite causes with their time, as well as their checkbooks.”
To assauge criticism that Obama promised to adopt a rescue dog they have made a donation to the DC Humane Society. A critic says, “It’s farcical. They’re donating money to urge people not to do what they did.”
Biden, too, is being hounded for getting a dog from a puppy mill the PETA Files reports (the buy one – kill one commercial campaign that was resurrected after Biden bought the dog is an appalling piece of dogma). The PETA Files won the 2008 best charity blog award.