Jeb Bush, Like Clinton, Cashed In Big Time After Leaving Office

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/07/02/Bush-Clinton-Cashed-Big-Time-After-Leaving-Office?utm_campaign=548f5168cb03a93709042da0&utm_source=boomtrain&utm_medium=email&bt_alias=eyJ1c2VySWQiOiIyOWU2MDRjZS1jNmY3LTQzNTYtOTFhOC1mMjU5ZjNmMjAzOWUifQ%3D%3D

By Rob Garver, The Fiscal Times
July 2, 2015

•••••

As has been extensively documented in the case of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and was revealed Tuesday in the release of three decades of tax returns filed by former Florida governor Jeb Bush, both candidates engaged in the activity that seems to occupy many people who leave public office: amassing a vast personal fortune.

•••••

According to the tax returns Bush made public, he pulled in approximately $29 million between leaving office in 2007 and the end of tax year 2013. Much of that income came from consulting contracts with unspecified clients, as well as a relationship with the investment bank Lehman Brothers, which hired Bush not long after he left the governor’s mansion.

•••••

Romney was also hammered for paying an average tax rate of below 15 percent on his considerable income, mainly because it was all taxed as capital gains rather than as wage or salary. Bush, in his release, was eager to point out that his average federal tax rate during those 33 years was 36 percent.

The number is a little puzzling, because during the bulk of Bush’s biggest earning years, even the top marginal tax rate was only 35 percent. Hopefully in a Bush White House, whoever did his taxes will be kept far away from the Office of Management & Budget.

(Financial planner Michael Kitces digs into the details of Bush’s alleged 36 percent effective tax rate here. Verdict: He’s stretching the truth. Quite a bit.)

About that 36% effective tax rate for Jeb Bush

By Michael Kitces
July 1, 2015 10:21 AM

This is a guest contributor article written by Michael Kitces. Mr. Kitces is a Partner and the Director of Research for Pinnacle Advisory Group, co-founder of the XY Planning Network, and publisher of the blog Nerd’s Eye View.

Yesterday presidential hopeful Jeb Bush released 33 years worth of tax returns in the spirit of campaign transparency with a headline that he had paid an effective tax rate of 36%.

A deeper look reveals that Jeb Bush has only had one year in the past 33 that he faced an effective tax rate higher than 36%, the most recent year of 2013. That was the year the 39.6% tax bracket returned under the American Taxpayer Relief Act. In other words Bush stated his effective tax rate was 36% for the past 33 years, when in reality it was lower than that in 32 of the last 33 years and was only slightly above that level in the very last year.

•••••

In fact as shown above from Bush’s own tax return data in many years his income and taxes were zero. However zero income years also effectively received a zero weighting in his self-reported results, while high income years with higher tax brackets receive a higher weighting. And the most recent year with the highest income – the one year Bush’s effective tax rate actually was over 36% - received the greatest weighting of all. Thus Bush’s reported effective tax rate of 36%, even though the reality is that the average of his effective tax rates across each of the years would have been only 21.3%.

Notably Jeb Bush’s total tax liabilities are also inflated by the fact that for many years when he was self-employed, he paid self-employment (SECA) taxes. While this is certainly part of one’s total tax liability, it is somewhat confusing to include it in a normal effective income tax rate calculation as these taxes appear on the personal tax return simply because Bush was self-employed. Had he earned wage income instead – which he actually did for many years – those taxes are recorded as payroll taxes, paid by the employer, and while they are a tax cost, they’re not typically included when doing a proper calculation of an effective tax rate.

When these amounts are excluded – along with a modest amount of household employment taxes that Bush paid on behalf of his housekeeper (which is a tax for his role as an employer, not on his personal income), Bush’s effective tax rate even by his own methodology is only 34%. And when all the years of his earnings are evenly weighted his effective tax rate averages out to only 20.6%.

Ultimately this isn’t meant to diminish the significance of the taxes that Jeb Bush has paid over the years, especially in his most recent and biggest income years. Nonetheless the fact remains that over the span of 33 working years his self-proclaimed effective tax rate of 36% has in reality only been his experience in just one of those years.

•••••

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/07/01/5-Things-We-Learned-Clinton-s-Latest-Email-Dump

5 Things We Learned from Clinton’s Latest Email Dump

By Eric Pianin, The Fiscal Times
July 1, 2015

•••••

while taking the helm of the Obama administration’s foreign policy, Clinton still fretted about retiring her $23 million campaign debt from her unsuccessful bid for the presidency. Clinton’s chief of protocol, Capricia Marshall, wrote to Paul Begala, a long-time Clinton family friend and Democratic strategist, to thank him for helping in raising $500,000 from an “email contest.” She said in April 2009 email, “You are all amazing,” adding that “You put a serious hole in HRC debt!”, according to The New York Times. - See more at: http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/07/01/5-Things-We-Learned-Clinton-s-Latest-Email-Dump#sthash.ATJoM2PK.dpuf

•••••