September 29, 2020

Joe Biden Paid 400 Times More in Taxes Than Donald Trump

Matt Slocum/AP

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In 2016, Donald Trump won the presidency of the United States and—according to a bombshell report Sunday night from the New York Times—paid $750 in taxes. In 2017, he paid $750. Other years, he paid $0.

This bill is way, way smaller than that of many Americans with much less wealth (and much less proficiency and seeming delight at playing financial hide-and-seek). It is, as my colleague Inae Oh wrote, enraging.

For comparison, take the American Joe Biden—former vice president and opponent of Trump in this year’s election. In 2016, Biden and his wife paid $1.5 million in taxes. That is 2,000 times more than what Trump paid in 2016. In 2017, they paid about $3.7 million. That is over 4,900 times more than Trump paid in 2017. You get the idea.

Biden released more returns before today’s debate, as did his running mate Sen. Kamala Harris. They also revealed that Biden paid $300,000 in taxes in 2019. And you demand consistency, so: That is 400 times more than Trump paid in 2016.

Trump broke norms in not releasing his taxes during his initial campaign and over the past few years. Our own David Corn has been asking for their release for years. But Biden’s information was all easy to find. The Biden campaign makes his financial disclosures public on his website. Here is the 2016 federal tax release. And here is the same from 2017. Unlike with Trump, it’s not a bombshell to see his finances.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

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Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

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