For those who like to take a peek at what are normally private documents concerning celebrities, the Obama campaign has released this PDF file with copies of the Obamas’ 2000 through 2006 income tax returns.  The file is over 67 mb in size and contains 103 pages.  I just skimmed through some of them and will leave it to others with more time on their hands to provide more detailed analyses.  What may be interesting to those who are already sick and tired of Michelle Obama’s attempts to portray herself as being poor and financially struggling are the AGI figures on these tax returns: 

2000:  $240,505
2001:  $272,759
2002:  $259,394
2003:  $238,327
2004:  $207,647
2005:  $1,655,106
2006:  $983,826

Thanks to Byron York at NRO for the link to this. 

Of course, nobody is holding their breath waiting for a similar disclosure from the Clintons.  The latest I recall on this topic was a promise to release copies of their past tax returns after they have moved back into the White House, when it’s obviously too late to have any effect on the election.  Knowing how the Clinton Family works, I’m actually expecting an earlier release, but with most of the details left out such as back up schedules identifying sources of income.  It would also be in their character to have a set of innocent looking dummy tax returns prepared for public consumption.  It would be illegal for anyone in the IRS or their tax preparer’s office to publicly dispute the authenticity of the released documents.  

In all fairness, while these appear to be legitimate, there’s no real way of telling if these copies of the Obamas’ tax returns are exact replicas of what they actually sent to IRS.  They are still relatively new on the national political scene and the levels of their dishonesty are just beginning to be revealed to those of us outside of Chicagoland.

Labels: politics

- posted by Kerry M. Kerstetter, MBA~CPA~ATP~ATA @ 3/25/2008 12:23:00 PM Send this post: