Joe Biden has, oh so proudly, released his and his wife's MFJ Federal income tax return. It's revealing, and I have a question for him and for President Donald Trump.
According to their return, their top-line income was $985,233 before their Standard Deduction.
According to their Schedule A, the Bidens gave $14,700 to charity.
That's 1.5% of their income--not even a decent tithe.
On the other hand, Trump has, since taking office, donated 100% of his salary to various causes, even if not to outright charities.
My question: Biden claims Trump isn't paying enough in taxes, but who's the real skinflint, who doesn't care about others, really?
Eric Hines
3 comments:
It may be worse than that (if I'm understanding this correctly)-
When you go to p.26 of the return, to "cash contributions" the largest ($10k) is to "Giacoppa Corp". I saw that and thought 'gee, that doesn't sound like your typical charity?'
Turns out it is not:
"The Bidens have used their home state’s financial privacy laws to shield his income from public view, by setting up two tax- and transparency-avoidance vehicles known as S corporations. He and his wife Jill Biden called them CelticCapri Corp. and Giacoppa Corp., respectively, and, according to the Wall Street Journal, have reported more than $13 million in profits the previous two years that weren’t subject to specific disclosure or self-employment taxes. As CNBC has described, money Biden made from book deals and speeches flowed into the S corporations and was then remitted to Biden and his wife as “distributions” rather than salary. When money is funneled through an S corporation, the recipient doesn’t owe Social Security or Medicare taxes on it, nor can the source of revenue be traced. (In addition to the distributions, the Bidens drew relatively small salaries from the S Corporations: under half a million dollars, for which they owed self-employment taxes.)"
So it sounds like it's deferred income, and they actually only gave $4,700 to charity, which would be a mere 0.47%.
I'd bet most of the Starbucks baristas making 20k give more than $94 to charity or some non-profit.
This seems very strange. The $14700 is specifically listed as 'charitable contributions' under 'itemized deductions.' Pass-through income from an S-corp would normally not be listen in this way.
The detail statement supporting these contributions lists $10,000 as 'from K-1...Giacoppa corp'...but if they are taking tax credit for contributions from an S-crop that they own and control, I would think that the detail statement would show who the contribution is being made TO, not just what the source of the funds was.
I recommend Arthur C Brooks Who Really Cares?, his research into charitable giving which shows that conservatives give more and volunteer more than liberals, even when church and religious organisations are taken out of the picture. They even donate more blood.
He didn't expect that result, and it went a long way to convince that liberal college professor to turn conservative and eventually even head up the American Enterprise Institute.
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