NEW YORK _ Indiana Gov. Mike Pence and his wife, Karen, earned adjusted gross income of $113,026 in 2015 and paid $8,956 in federal income taxes, according to a copy of the Republican vice presidential nominee's return that was released Friday _ a move toward transparency that his running mate, Donald Trump, has yet to make.
The Pences paid an effective tax rate of 7.9 percent and donated about that same portion of their adjusted gross income to charity, the return shows. In all, the couple released 10 years' worth of their tax records, going back to the 2006 tax year.
Trump has departed from 40 years of tradition for presidential candidates by refusing to release any of his tax returns for public inspection. The billionaire businessman has said he's under an audit by the Internal Revenue Service and won't release his returns until that audit is concluded _ which may not happen before the Nov. 8 election. IRS officials have said there's no law preventing taxpayers from releasing their returns to the public, even if they're under audit.
Tax specialists have said that if Trump releases his returns, he'd expose them to additional scrutiny _ perhaps revealing issues that IRS auditors haven't discovered. Nonetheless, specialists say, there's little reason why he couldn't disclose his adjusted gross income, the total tax he has paid, how much he has given to charity and other details from the returns.
The campaign released a letter from Trump's tax lawyers in March that said his tax returns for the years 2002 through 2008 were no longer under any audit, but Trump hasn't released those documents.
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has posted nine years of tax returns on her campaign website _ and the campaign has said repeatedly that she and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, have made their returns public "for every year dating back to 1977." Clinton's running mate, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, has posted 10 years of returns.
In three years as Indiana's chief executive, Pence successfully pushed state lawmakers to cut state-level income taxes, corporate taxes and personal property taxes and to scrap the state's inheritance tax.
