If you are looking for Obama’s tax returns, here they are, all 103 pages of it.
Here is the summary:
Year Total Combined income Gifts to charity Federal taxes 2000 $240,726 $2,350 $63,732 2001 $275,123 $1,470 $86,072 2002 $260,824 $1,050 $68,958 2003 $238,327 $3,400 $51,856 2004 $207,647 $2,500 $40,426 2005 $1,670,995 $77,315 $545,614 2006 $991,296 $60,307 $277,43
2007 tax returns are not ready yet but according Obama’s campaign, the couple donated $240,000 to charity last year. Most of their income in 05 and beyond came from book sales, I am currently reading The Audacity of Hope and I can see why its so popular.
Opposition will probably try to exaggerate, as usual, a few things about Treehouse Foods, Church donations, or Rezko (all non-stories and have already been squashed, only other critique I saw was that he donated too little to charities… yeah I know) but overall the tax returns are pretty clean and non-eventful if you ask me.
I am more curious to see where Clinton got 5 million in spare change to donate to her campaign, she said those tax returns will be released next week today.
The connection between Tony Rezko and the Obamas: Rezko’s trial in Chicago is concentrating heavily on Rezko’s alleged corruption of the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board in 2003-2004.
Obama was an important player in the Illinois health care regulation field at that time:
“In January 2003, Obama became chairman of the Health and Human Services Committee when Democrats, after a decade in the minority, regained a majority in the Illinois Senate.”
Meanwhile, Mrs. Obama was being paid six figures by a major Chicago hospital to do Affirmative Action type stuff; note that she got a raise from $100k to $300k after Obama became Senator.