By WILL WEISSERT – Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Joe Biden and his wife Jill made $610,702 in their first year in the White House and paid $150,439 in federal income taxes. That was a tax rate of 24.6% for 2021, well above the average of around 14% for all Americans.
The totals were similar to the Bidens’ returns in 2020, when they said they made $607,336 while he was running for president. They reported a federal income tax rate of 25.9% at the time.
According to U.S. Census data, the national median household income in 2020 was $67,521.
It is the second year in a row that Biden has released his White House tax returns, reviving a tradition of presidents releasing their filings after President Donald Trump declined to do so.
Both this year and last, the Bidens have been in sharp decline since 2019, when they made nearly $1 million, mostly from book sales, speaking engagements, and their teaching stints at the University of Pennsylvania and Northern Virginia Community College.
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Jill Biden is still teaching in Virginia while serving as first lady. The results show Biden earns $378,333 as president — his annual salary of $400,000 minus time before noon on Inauguration Day on Jan. 20, 2021 — and his wife receives $67,116 for her tuition.
The couple donated $17,394 to 10 different charities in 2021. The biggest gift was $5,000 to the Beau Biden Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to fighting child abuse and named after her son Beau, who died of brain cancer in 2015 at the age of 46.
The Bidens also released their 2021 Delaware income tax return and said they paid $30,765 in state income tax there. The First Lady released a Virginia tax return showing that she paid $2,721 in Virginia state income tax.
Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, released their 2021 tax returns showing they earned $1,655,563 and paid $523,371 in 2021 — a federal income tax rate of 31.6%. Harris and Emhoff also paid $120,517 in California income taxes and $2,044 in New York City income taxes.
The second gentleman, who teaches at Georgetown Law School, paid $54,441 in District of Columbia income taxes, and the couple donated $22,100 to charity in 2021.
Biden championed transparency about his personal finances, releasing 22 years of tax returns ahead of the 2020 election. It was a direct challenge to Trump, who for years argued that an audit prevented him from declassifying his taxes — even though the IRS had ordered incumbent presidents and vice presidents’ tax returns to be audited for over four decades.
The New York Times later obtained Trump’s tax records and reported that he paid just $750 in federal income taxes during his first year in the White House. IRS figures show the average taxpayer paid around $12,200 in 2017, about 16 times what the former president paid.
The statements were released on April 15, traditionally the deadline for paying federal taxes. This year the deadline has been extended to Monday 18 April.
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