WASHINGTON (AP) — Marco Rubio released summaries
of his last five years of tax filings on Saturday, revealing him to be a
candidate with a senator's steady annual income of $176,000 who reaped
repeated windfalls from book deals. During his first four years in the
Senate, Rubio and his wife Jeanette together earned an average of
$531,000 a year.
Since winning election to an office in Washington, Rubio's income has
ranged from $276,059 to $938,963, and he has paid between $46,500 and
$254,894 in federal income tax.
Most of the income came from a business that collected royalties on
two books, based on a comparison with personal Senate financial
disclosures.
In 2012, his most lucrative year, his effective tax rate topped out at a little more than 31 percent.
The documents Rubio has released are not complete tax filings, as
Mitt Romney provided in 2012 and Hillary Clinton produced last year.
Instead, Rubio released the first two pages of his 1040 form, which
summarizes the details of his income and taxes.
Rubio's release of his most recent tax returns comes after Republican
front-runner Donald Trump said in Thursday's GOP debate that his tax
returns have been the subject of audits for at least a dozen consecutive
years. He said he would not release them until that process concludes.
"We're putting these out today to put pressure on Trump and the other
candidates to release theirs," said Rubio campaign spokesman Alex
Conant. "To the extent there are additional questions about Marco, we
won't rule out providing more information in the future."
REUTERS/Nick OxfordRepublican U.S. presidential candidate Marco Rubio speaks at a campaign rally in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma February 26, 2016.
The
disclosure makes Rubio the only of the top three Republican candidates
to fulfill pledges to disclose their tax information. Despite
criticizing Trump during the debate for not disclosing his tax filings,
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz did not meet a self-imposed deadline of Friday to
release his tax returns for the years since he ran for Senate.
Cruz campaign spokeswoman Catherine Frazier on Saturday did not offer a new timeline for releasing the records.
"We are pulling them together," she said. "They will be released. These things take time."
For Rubio, the records add to 10 years of previous tax returns he
released when running for the Senate. Those returns show how the young
lawmaker's finances benefited from high-paying jobs at law firms as he
rose in state and national politics.
In 2000, Rubio and his wife reported a combined income of $82,710.
The family's income grew to more than $330,000 in 2005, the year he
became speaker of the House in Florida, and by the time he left the
statehouse in 2008, he reported nearly $400,000 in income.
Between 2004 and 2008, Rubio gave nearly $50,000 to Christ Fellowship
in Miami and more than $16,000 to First Baptist Church of Perrine,
Florida, according to the documents released at the time.
No such calculation of charitable contributions is possible for the
years covered in Saturday's release, however, because Rubio did not make
public the part of his tax returns that itemizes deductions.
Comments
Post a Comment