As Americans add up their debts to the taxman today, Bernie Sanders – the man who wants you to pay MORE of your hard-earned income – has just been busted on a major tax hypocrisy! Jim Geraghty reports on National Review Online that the infamous socialist is taking advantage of the exact deductions that he rails against on the campaign trail:
Bernie Sanders released his 2014 tax return this weekend, revealing that he and his wife took $60,208 in deductions from their taxable income. These deductions are all perfectly legal and permitted under the U.S. tax code, but they present a morally inconvenient, if delicious, irony: The Democratic socialist from Vermont, a man who rages against high earners paying a lower effective tax rate than blue-collar workers, saved himself thousands using many of the tricks that would be banned under his own tax plan.
With all of his itemized deductions, Sanders’s taxable income was significantly lower than it would have been if he had taken the standard deduction. The deductions left Sanders and his wife paying $27,653 in federal income taxes in 2014, on a joint income of $205,271 — an effective federal tax rate of 13.5 percent. If that seems low to you, your instincts are right: According to the Tax Foundation, the average federal income-tax rate for a couple making $200,000 to $500,000 in 2014 was 15.2 percent. The “millionaires and billionaires” that Sanders is so fond of berating payed, on average, just more than twice as much of their income (27.4 percent) in federal taxes as he did.
On the campaign trail, Sanders’s taxation philosophy is simple: If you can pay more, you should; deductions are not a justifiable reason for a wealthy person to pay a lower effective rate than someone who earns less. His web site declares, “We need a progressive tax system in this country which is based on ability to pay. It is not acceptable that corporate CEOs in this country often enjoy an effective tax rate which is lower than their secretaries.”…
The Sanders’s single largest deduction was for the interest payments on their home mortgages. The senator isn’t such a fan of that deduction. In a 1997 book and again in his 2015 autobiography, he called for raising nearly $35 billion in new taxes by capping it at the first $300,000 in home-mortgage debt. In a speech on the floor of the House in 1997, he portrayed the deduction as a welfare payment to billionaires: “[Republicans] don’t talk about a housing policy through the home-interest mortgage deduction, which allows billionaires to get checks from the government when they deduct the mortgage from their mansions.”
Another example of a big government liberal saying, “More taxes for thee and not for me.”
Here’s a video of Bernie claiming his tax returns are very boring – probably because he was hoping you wouldn’t notice his tax hypocrisy!
What do you think of Bernie’s tax hypocrisy? And what do you think the Clintons are hiding in their returns? Let us know in the comments!
