US President Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, refused to release his tax returns, a precedent for the new administration’s refusal.

US President Joe Biden resumed the long-standing presidential tradition by issuing tax returns on Monday, showing that 25.9% of the income of the first couple in 2020 went to the federal government. The average federal income tax rate is slightly higher than 14%.

Biden and his wife Jill, a teacher, made $607,336 when they ran for president last year. This is down from $985,223 in 2019, when they mainly made money from book sales, lectures and positions at the University of Pennsylvania and Northern Virginia Community College. As a result of the election campaign, these income opportunities are reduced.

Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, refused to release his tax returns, a precedent for the new administration’s refusal.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters before issuing the press release on Monday: “I hope we will continue to release the president’s tax returns, as every president of the United States expects.”

The Biden family donated $30,704 to 10 charities last year. The biggest gift was $10,000 to the Beau Biden Foundation, a non-profit organization that specializes in child abuse, named after the president’s late son.

Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband Douglas Emhoff also released 2020 tax returns. They paid a 36.7% tax rate on income of US$1,695,225 and donated US$27,006 to charity. Harris was formerly a U.S. Senator representing California, and Emhoff was an entertainment lawyer in Los Angeles. Now he teaches law at Georgetown University.

Biden (Biden) launched activities to improve the transparency of personal financial management, released 22 years of tax returns before the 2020 general election. This is a direct challenge to Trump. Trump claims that for several years, audits have prevented him from releasing taxes-even though the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) requires that the tax returns of the current president and vice president be audited for more than four years. ten years.

The New York Times later obtained the tax records of the famous billionaire and reported that he paid only $750 in federal income tax during his first year in the White House. According to data from the US Internal Revenue Service, the average income of taxpayers in 2017 was about $12,200, which is about 16 times that of the former president.

Biden told Trump in a presidential debate: “You haven’t issued a separate tax return for a year.” “What are you hiding?”

Trump claimed that there was no evidence that he had prepaid taxes, and believed that $750 was the application fee.

The Internal Revenue Service does not charge an application fee.