Clintons Made $109 Million in Last 8 Years
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and former President Bill Clinton released tax data Friday showing they earned $109 million over the last eight years, an ascent into the uppermost tier of American taxpayers that seemed unimaginable in 2001, when they left the White House with little money and facing millions in legal bills.
The bulk of their wealth has come from speaking and book-writing, which together account for almost $92 million, including a $15 million advance — larger than previously thought — from Mr. Clinton’s 2004 autobiography, “My Life.” The former president’s vigorous lecture schedule, where his speeches command upwards of $250,000, brought in almost $52 million.
During that time, the Clintons paid $33.8 million in federal taxes and claimed deductions for $10.2 million in charitable contributions. The contributions went to a family foundation run by the Clintons that has given away only about half of the money they put into it, and most of that was last year, after Mrs. Clinton declared her candidacy.
Mrs. Clinton’s campaign released the eight years of income tax information late Friday, following a rising clamor on the campaign trail for her to follow the lead of her opponent, Senator Barack Obama, who had previously disclosed his tax returns for the same period. In what proved to be an awkward juxtaposition, the disclosure of the records — which revealed the Clintons to be in the top one-hundredth of 1 percent, or roughly 14,500, of all taxpayers — came on the day that Mrs. Clinton called for the creation of a cabinet-level post to tackle poverty.
In releasing seven years of tax returns, plus a summary of income for last year, the Clinton campaign noted that the couple had disclosed all their income tax records since Mr. Clinton was governor of Arkansas. Neither Mr. Obama, of Illinois, nor Senator John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican nominee, has released his 2007 tax-return information, and Mr. McCain has not released tax returns from previous years.
“The Clintons have now made public 30 years of tax returns, a record matched by few people in public service,” said Jay Carson, a campaign spokesman. “None of Hillary Clinton’s presidential opponents have revealed anything close to this amount of personal financial information.”
Mr. Obama’s tax returns show that he and his wife, Michelle, reported about $1 million in income in 2006, much of it from his book deals. Mr. McCain’s wife, Cindy, an heiress to a beer distributorship fortune, is believed to be worth tens of millions of dollars, but the exact amount is unclear.
Speaking to a statewide convention of North Dakota Democrats in Grand Forks on Friday, Mrs. Clinton criticized the Bush administration’s tax cuts, which she said favored the rich, then referred to the tax data she and her husband released earlier in the day.
“Now don’t get me wrong, I have absolutely nothing against rich people,” she said. “As a matter of fact, my husband, much to my surprise and his, has made a lot of money since he left the White House, by doing what he loves doing most — talking to people. But we didn’t ask for George Bush’s tax cuts. We didn’t want them, and we didn’t need them.”
Although there is no requirement that candidates release their tax returns, it has been common practice since the 1970s; a release typically occurs after a candidate becomes a party nominee, not during the primaries.
The returns provide the most detailed look at the Clintons’ finances since 2000, when they last made their returns public, and in many ways provide an unusually detailed look at the earning power of a former president. Never before has the spouse of a former president run for office, forcing disclosure of their finances.
In fact, since Mrs. Clinton announced her campaign for president, controversies involving her husband’s business and philanthropic endeavors have occasionally raised questions about the potential for ethical conflicts should she win the White House. Among them is Mr. Clinton’s partnership with Ronald W. Burkle, the billionaire investor and supermarket magnate, whose deals have included investing money for the government of Dubai and acquiring a stake in a Chinese media company.
Mr. Clinton had previously not disclosed what he earned from that partnership, but the tax returns show he collected at least $12.6 million since 2002, and possibly as much as $15.3 million, from his work as an adviser and rainmaker for Mr. Burkle’s Yucaipa Companies. The lack of clarity is because the Clintons released only a summary of their 2007 income, which lists $2.7 million in partnership income but does not identify sources. Based on previous years’ returns, it is likely that income came from Yucaipa.
Since 2002, the former president has provided investment advice and helped drum up business for several domestic and foreign funds in Yucaipa’s portfolio, one of two consulting arrangements he entered into after leaving office. Representatives of the Clintons have said that Mr. Clinton has made arrangements to dissolve his Yucaipa partnership if his wife wins the nomination, to avoid possible ethical conflicts.
The other consulting arrangement Mr. Clinton has had was with InfoUSA, a consumer database company run by a friend, Vinod Gupta, who gave $3.3 million in consulting contracts to Mr. Clinton beginning in 2003, according to court records related to a shareholder lawsuit against Mr. Gupta. The shareholders accused Mr. Gupta of improperly spending company money on the consulting agreements and on private jet travel for the Clintons.
It is not clear from the tax returns exactly how much Mr. Clinton earned from InfoUSA each year, but a summary of the Clintons’ income from 2007 released by Mrs. Clinton’s campaign said Mr. Clinton was paid $400,000 by InfoUSA that year.
The returns show that Mr. Clinton hit the ground running after leaving office, bringing in $13.7 million from speaking and writing during his first year as a private citizen, a huge leap from the $416,000 the Clintons reported the previous year.
Since then, Mr. Clinton has earned $29.6 million from two books, “My Life” and “Giving,” while Mrs. Clinton has collected $10.5 million from two books, “Living History” and “It Takes a Village.” She donated $1.1 million from book proceeds to charity.
Mr. Clinton last year earned $6.3 million from “Giving,” a book on philanthropy, and reported giving $1 million of that to charity. In the book, Mr. Clinton espouses his own formula for charitable donations, recommending that people give away 5 percent of their income to charitable causes. “If giving by the wealthiest Americans even approached these levels,” he wrote, “I’m convinced it would spark an enormous outpouring of contributions from Americans of more modest means.”
The pace of the Clintons’ own charitable giving, which peaked last year at $3 million, has not always kept up with their income, and by at least one measure, has sometimes fallen short of the spirit of the 5 percent goal, which is to get money into the hands of charities that do good works.
In 2002, for instance, they reported income totaling $9.5 million and $115,000 in gifts to charity. In other years, they have given much larger amounts to their family foundation, but it has yet to disburse all of the money.
The Clintons took a tax deduction in 2004 for $2.5 million in charitable gifts, $2 million of which went to their family foundation, which as a tax-exempt nonprofit is considered a charity under the tax code. That same year, the foundation gave away just $221,000 to charitable groups, according to its tax return.
A representative of the Clintons said that when they and their foundation filed their 2007 tax returns, the records would show that all of the $3 million they gave to the foundation last year had been passed on to other charities. That will account for more than half of all the charitable donations that the foundation has made since 2001, according to a review of its tax returns.
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