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RUSH: Hillary Clinton has released — well, the Clintons have released — their tax returns. Some conflicting reporting. The first report was a 42% combined tax rate. Now they’re saying it’s effectively 30%. But here’s the deal: 96% of Hillary’s charitable donations went to the Clinton Foundation! (laughing) Yeah, 96%, they donated to themselves, and CNN just said, “Oh, look how much they give to charity! Aren’t they so wonderful?” Yeah.
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RUSH: You know, it was the funniest thing to listen to CNN talk about the Clintons’ tax returns. The infobabe was saying, “You know, Wolf, it’s really, really striking here that Clinton’s income in 2014 was nearly $30 million, and mysteriously, Wolf, their income last year dropped to only $14 million. That’s really, really strange, Wolf, I wonder. And then, Wolf, you know, 60% of the Clinton income came from Bill Clinton doing speeches.” And I’m looking at this infobabe and thinking, “Do you think we’re idiots here? You don’t think we understand that they could turn their income spigot off the year before she’s gonna run for president and do it on purpose?”
The woman that made $20 million in two years doing speeches? And then they were raving about how much money Hillary gives to charity. They didn’t tell us that 96% of Hillary’s charitable donations went to the Clinton Foundation. (laughing) I mean, you have to marvel at it.
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RUSH: Now, I’m gonna circle back here to Hillary releasing her tax returns. I’ve seen a bunch of different data on this today. The first story I saw was a CNN infobabe with actual Hillary tax returns. She’s going through the pages and calculating various numbers, and she had concluded and reported that the combined federal and state tax rate that the Clintons had paid was 42%, and that would be true. That’s pretty much accurate.
Actually, it should be over 50%, given that their official residence is New York and the Feds… But with some deductions, obviously. But — and this is important. I can’t recall — and I could be wrong about this, but I can’t recall — a presidential candidate having released his tax returns with an effective rate any higher than 25%. I think Romney… Remember, this didn’t help him. The tax rate calculated that Romney had paid was 14 or 15%. Nothing illegal.
He had just used every tool available in the existing tax code. What the Clintons have done here, is they knew that these would be the tax returns being released and previous years. This year — actually, tax year 2015. They knew that that was gonna be the year released, so I think what they’ve done, is they dramatically reduced their income for 2015. The 2014 income was around $30 million. The 2015 income is around 12 to 13 million.
Sixty percent of their income is Bill Clinton’s speeches last year. Well, we know that Hillary earned $21 million in two years just doing speeches herself. So the Clintons actually — and this is strategic planning. You can’t fault ’em for it. You can point it out, which I’m doing. They obviously planned in 2015 to report much less income than in the prior year so that it might be written, “Look at the Clintons! They didn’t earn as much. Why, the Clintons are not as filthy rich as we thought.
“Why, the Clintons are closer to you and me. Look at Hillary. They earned $30 million, and now they only earn 12 or 14. Wow, the Clintons! Wow.” It’s supposed to redound to them positively. And then rerelease the tax returns as such that it’s calculated they paid a rate of 42%. That’s more than most Americans pay. You’ll find that the top 1%, that’s been about what they’re paying. You just don’t know that because it’s never reported.
But there aren’t that many deductions, folks. You can… If you want to lose control of your money, you can shelter a lot of it, but you lose control doing it. Shelter it over here, puts it over there. Charitable donation there, charitable donation here. But these people reporting tax rates like Romney, 14% or 15%? That may be what the government got, but he didn’t keep 85% of it. It had to go places where he lost control of it in order to get the deduction. It had to go to investments here or there.
But what people don’t understand about this is that when a candidate or anybody in this tax atmosphere here has an effective tax rate on their return of 14 or 15%, that doesn’t mean they found a way to cheat the government and are walking around with 85 or 80% in their pocket. They lose control over a lot of it by virtue of where they pull it. They are putting it places other than the government. They make the decision, “Look, I’d rather this business, that charity, this whatever, this 501(c) get it.
“I’d rather they get the money rather than the government.” But they don’t get it themselves. It’s a really convoluted thing. What the Clintons have done here is structure their 2015 payment so that you see they’re paying a 42% rate and go, “Man, oh, man! The Clintons are not cheating anybody. Wow, the Clintons are… Wow. They’re so honest! Well, look at the Clintons. Man, they’re not taking any deductions. They’re not cheating.”
That’s what they want you to conclude, after you realize that they earned $20 million less in 2015 than the previous year. So you’re supposed to say, “Wow, what…? Man. They’re sacrificing for us! The Clintons are actually losing money in order to serve us!” That’s what they want to be able to say and that’s what they want you to conclude with their tax returns. And it’s not coincidental that Hillary today is demanding that Trump release his. That’s obviously part of the plan.
Now, here’s one more bit of information about the Clinton tax return for 2015.
Hillary and Bill deducted $1,042,000 in charitable contributions last year, and you’re supposed to say, “Wow, a million! Oh, wow, the Clintons really have a lot of compassion! They really care about the downtrodden. Why, you see that, Mabel? They gave $1 million and $42,000 to charity!” Now, at their rate, the maximum deduction you get… You don’t get to deduct all of that. You get to deduct, I think, 39.6% of every dollar — and if Obama gets his way, the wealthy will only be able to deduct 25% (at most) of every dollar.
But, of that $1,042,000 the Clintons donated to charity, one million of it went to their own family nonprofit, the Clinton Foundation. The documents show that the Clintons earned — oh, I was wrong. It’s $10,745,000 last year, mostly on income from giving speeches. Of that, they gave just over a million to charity, but the donations can hardly be seen as altruistic since the money flowed right back to an entity that they control. It’s so circular, their charitable giving, that it is mind bending.
So they get paid to give speeches to people who have given to the foundation, and then they pay the Clintons on top of it, and then they donate the money they get for the speeches back to the foundation. And the vast majority of their income is giving speeches. Hillary reported some royalties from her memoir. So that is my report on the Clinton tax return.
I want you to listen to Alison Kosik, CNN. She was on this afternoon with some other people. Wolf Blitzer said, “Bill and Hillary, so most of the income I take it from last year’s income that he generated largely from speeches, she did very little of that.” Right, because the previous two years she had made 21 million doing speeches, but Wolf probably doesn’t even know that. “So Alison, she didn’t do very many speeches, she didn’t contribute much because she was already running for president –” implication: She was already in government service. She wasn’t taking anything. She’s such a wonderful person; isn’t that right, Alison?
KOSIK: It is pretty stunning, though, to see the huge difference in income from 2014 to 2015. I do want to mention one other thing, charities. And it goes without saying that if you’re gonna make less money, you’re gonna certainly donate less to charity, so we saw a donation of $1 million in charity versus $3 million to the Clinton Family Foundation, so of that $1 million happening in 2015, $42,000 going to other charities in 2015. So if you look at last year, almost 10% of gross income was donated to charities.
RUSH: Oh, they’re so wonderful! (exclaiming) It went to their own charity. Do you happen to know what the pass-through on the Clinton charity is? In other words, you give a dollar to the Clinton charity, how much of that dollar ends up in charity? You give it to their foundation. You know what the pass-through is? It’s like 30 cents. The administrative costs on a dollar of donated to the Clintons is like 70 cents, I think I saw that somewhere, 72 cents, something like that.
They pay a lot of people at that foundation. They pay a lot of family members on that foundation. Yeah, of course. There are people that work for the foundation. You have secretaries, you have fundraisers, you have liaisons. There’s a lot of people that earn money from that foundation. Yes, my friends. That way the Clintons don’t have to pay them. Charitable donors — ahem — do.
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