2020 Democrat presidential candidate Andrew Yang released seven years of tax returns just before Thanksgiving, showing his income during the time he created and ran Venture for America.
According to The Hill’s exclusive report, Yang’s returns from 2011 to 2018 showed income from $121,000 to about $350,000. In 2011, the year Yang created Venture for America, he gave $126,000 to the organization. In other years, he had less than $5,000 in charitable giving.
What do the returns show?
“Andrew Yang’s tax returns show what America has come to know about him. He’s an entrepreneur at heart while trying to balance the financial interests of his family,” Yang campaign national press secretary S.Y. Lee told The Hill.
As it turns out, Yang also apparently benefitted from Trump’s tax cuts. Accounting firm partner Tony Nitti told the Hill “that Yang seems to have paid less in taxes in 2018 than he would have under the previous tax law,” citing “provisions in Trump’s tax law like lower rates, a larger standard deduction, and deduction for income from noncorporate businesses.”
The returns do not cover the time period after Yang’s Columbia Law School graduation when he worked for several start-ups. He is the last of the top several candidates to release his returns.
Yang is currently sixth in national polling. Newcomer to the race Michael Bloomberg has not yet released his returns, but says he will do so.
Making it rain
Yang has proposed a basic income of $1,000 per month for all Americans to offset the loss of jobs through automation. As a campaign stunt, he chose 10 people to which he gave $1,000 per month from campaign funds.
Critics wondered if it was really legal or permissible to give away campaign funds to potential voters, but Yang’s campaign said that it “consulted with [its] counsel, and the Freedom Dividends are fully compliant with all [Federal Election Commission] regulations.”
Some campaign finance expert aren’t so sure about the legality of Yang’s giveaway. “If the payments are made from the campaign, this will certainly raise questions as to whether they are permitted under the law, but at present how the law should be applied to these payments is a gray area for which there are no direct precedents,” professor of government at Colby College in Maine Anthony Corrado said, according to CNBC.
Campaign finance expert Craig Holman also told Fox News that the giveaway could be a “violation of the federal campaign finance law.” Meanwhile, Politico’s Ann Ravel says that the Federal Election Commission would have to make the final call on whether it’s legal or not — something that currently can’t happen because the FEC lacks a quorum of commissioners.
Trump battles tax return demands
President Donald Trump has not released his tax returns since first running for president in 2015. He has claimed that he can’t release them because he is under audit, but the IRS says it is permissible for him to release them if he wanted to do so.
Trump is currently engaged in a court battle to prevent the state of New York from seeing his returns. He is afraid the information will be leaked if it is released. He said he will eventually release his financial information to the public, but he didn’t say when the release would occur.
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