Don't Mess With Taxes

April 15 was Tax Day for most of us. That included President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden, as well as Vice President Kamala Harris and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff.

When Biden and Harris took office, they reinstated the annual tradition of our country's top elected officials voluntarily releasing their tax filings.

The 2023 tax year returns of the Bidens and Harris/Emhoff earn this weekend's Saturday Shout Out.

You can see the details at the White House's official Tax Returns online page. In addition to this year's filings, there are links to the returns filed by the president and vice president since they took office.

If you're not ready yet to flip through the Biden's 29 pages of tax details sent this year to the Internal Revenue Service, or the 40-page filing by Harris and Emhoff, here are some highlights.

Adjusted gross income: The President and First Lady Jill Biden made a combined federal adjusted gross income (AGI) of $619,976 in 2023, which is about 7 percent more than they reported in 2022. They paid combined federal income tax of $146,629 this year, for an effective tax rate of almost 23.7 percent.

Harris' and Emhoff's AGI was $450,299 in 2023, which was slightly lower than their 2022 amount. Their federal tax liability of $88,570 represents an effective tax rate of 19.7 percent.

Most of the income for both couples was from salaries. That meant that like most U.S. taxpayers, they covered the bulk of their tax bills via federal and state taxes withheld from those earnings.

State taxes: Speaking of state taxes, the Bidens' Delaware state income tax bill for 2023 was $30,908. Mrs. Biden also paid $3,549 in income tax to Virginia, where she works as a community college professor.

The vice president and her husband paid state taxes of $15,167 to California, their official place of residency, and the District of Columbia, where $11,599 was due from Emhoff's earning as an attorney and professor at Georgetown University's Law Center.

Itemized deductions: Both couples itemized. And both lost a sizeable chunk of tax-deductible taxes paid due to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act's $10,000 state and local taxes (SALT) cap.

Their Schedule A filings showed each couple also gave, and deducted, charitable gifts.

The Bidens contributed $20,477 to 17 different charities. The largest donations went to Women's Wellness Space, a Philadelphia-area nonprofit that assists traumatized women, and the Beau Biden Foundation, which works to protect children from abuse and is named after the president's late son. Each received a $5,000 gift last year.

The Harris/Emhoff charitable donation total was $23,026. The largest single donations last year by the vice president and her husband were $5,000 each to three universities, California State-Northridge and the University of Southern California in the Golden State, and Howard University in Washington, D.C.

Other taxable income: The Bidens had taxable pension and Social Security income.

Both couples also received income that wasn't subject to withholding, notably taxable interest, and made estimated tax payments related to those earnings.

However, each couple also slightly underestimated the 1040-ES amounts due, and each owed a small estimated tax penalty, $285 for the Bidens and $451 for Harris and Emhoff.

Years and years of tax returns: With the public release of their 2023 tax returns, the Bidens have made public 26 years of federal and state filings. Harris has released returns covering 20 tax years.

The Commander in Chief's voluntary airing of tax details has been a long-standing Tax Day tradition, with the exception of Biden's immediate Oval Office predecessor. Some of Donald Trump's tax returns, from 2015 through 2020, were released by the House Ways and Means Committee on Dec. 20, 2022.

The publication of presidential tax returns tradition calls for a second Saturday Shout Out to Tax Notes' compilation of returns released by presidents, vice presidents, and White House candidates over the year.

You also might find these items of interest:

• House bill proposes ending federal tax on Social Security benefits
• Trump's taxes reveal turns us all into auditors, but where was the IRS?
• Attention White House wannabes: the IRS audits presidential tax returns every single year

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