Hillary Clinton and her husband reportedly took advantage of a tax-avoidance strategy to minimize how much they owe the IRS.
This apparent tax dodge, although legal, could make it awkward for Mrs. Clinton to run on a platform of addressing income inequality if she seeks the Democrat presidential nomination in 2016.
Since leaving the White House “dead broke,” a claim she subsequently stepped back from, the former U.S. Secretary of State and her ex-president husband have become very wealthy. Mrs. Clinton received a $14 million advance just for the Hard Choices memoir, which she is promoting on an unexpectedly contentious book tour.
As a fundamental part of their political philosophy, the couple have long pushed for raising taxes on the one-percent as well as others.
But there’s a catch when it comes to the estate tax, a.k.a. the death tax, the Bloomberg news agency reports:
Bill and Hillary Clinton have long supported an estate tax to prevent the U.S. from being dominated by inherited wealth. That doesn’t mean they want to pay it. To reduce the tax pinch, the Clintons are using financial planning strategies befitting the top 1 percent of U.S. households in wealth. These moves, common among multimillionaires, will help shield some of their estate from the tax that now tops out at 40 percent of assets upon death. The Clintons created residence trusts in 2010 and shifted ownership of their New York house into them in 2011, according to federal financial disclosures and local property records. Among the tax advantages of such trusts is that any appreciation in the house’s value can happen outside their taxable estate. The move could save the Clintons hundreds of thousands of dollars in estate taxes…”
The likely beneficiary of this tax strategy is daughter Chelsea Clinton — recently revealed to have made a staggering $600,000 a year as a NBC special correspondent who is rarely on the air — and her family.
The Clintons wouldn’t be the first so-called limousine liberals who manage to insulate themselves from adverse policies and regulations imposed on others who are far less connected.
According to CBS News , commenting on the same financial revelation , “Estate tax champions Bill and Hillary Clinton are doing just about everything in their power to stave off hefty estate taxes on their own personal fortune… The report… shows that the two heads of the political dynasty have been seizing on legal but slippery loopholes to minimize taxes on inherited wealth — maneuvers not atypical of multimillionaires but which will inevitably drum up cries of hypocrisy based on the Clintons’ active support for the estate tax in the past…”
According to the New York Post , “Despite being self-described paupers on their way out of the White House, the Clintons managed to sock away so much that they now want to shield their wealth from the dreaded estate tax they enthusiastically supported before striking it rich.”
CNN ‘s S.E. Cupp claims that Hillary Clinton is an anachronism in part because “… Clinton is taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street firms for speeches — in which she assures them she isn’t anti-bank. Her recent comments about needing all that dough to buy ‘houses’ doesn’t help…”
NFL Hall of Famer and broadcaster Terry Bradshaw isn’t a fan either, for what that’s worth, if anything:
Do you think that Hillary Clinton is paying her fair share of taxes?
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