This is common practice for US presidents. Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, a still-working college professor, earned $579,514 last year and paid a total of $169,820 in taxes, the White House reported on Tuesday (April 18th). “With this release, President Biden has released a total of 25 years of tax filings to the public,” the executive said.
The statement emphasizes the 80-year-old Democrat’s “commitment to transparency,” certainly not an innocent mention in the American political context. Joe Biden, who is increasingly signaling his intention to seek re-election, could face Donald Trump in 2024.
However, the Republican, who has broken with the White House’s practice of fiscal transparency, is fighting for his part to keep his tax returns confidential.
A parliamentary committee voted last December to publish the billionaire’s six years of tax returns between 2015 and 2020. We learned, for example, that Donald Trump had paid only 750 dollars in taxes in 2017, his first year in office. White House, then about 1 million in 2018 and 2019 … and nothing at all in 2020, the year of his defeat against Joe Biden and where his income was in the red of 5 million dollars.
The Biden couple also donated $20,180 to charities last year, the statement said. The White House added that Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, declared $456,918 in 2022.
