www.rushlimbaugh.com<\/p>\n
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n
RUSH: Hillary Clinton has released — well, the Clintons have released — their tax returns.\u00a0 Some conflicting reporting. The first report was a 42% combined tax rate. Now they’re saying it’s effectively 30%.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n
RUSH:\u00a0 You know, it was the funniest thing to listen to CNN talk about the Clintons’ tax returns.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 That’s really, really strange, Wolf, I wonder.\u00a0 And then, Wolf, you know, 60% of the Clinton income came from Bill Clinton doing speeches.”\u00a0 And I’m looking at this infobabe and thinking, “Do you think we’re idiots here?\u00a0 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?”<\/p>\n
![](\"http:\/\/www.rushimg.com\/cimages\/\/media\/images\/cnn-clinton-news-network-b3\/1527262-1-eng-GB\/CNN-Clinton-News-Network-B.jpg\")
The woman that made $20 million in two years doing speeches?\u00a0 And then they were raving about how much money Hillary gives to charity.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n
RUSH: Now, I’m gonna circle back here to Hillary releasing her tax returns.\u00a0 I’ve seen a bunch of different data on this today.\u00a0 The first story I saw was a CNN infobabe with actual Hillary tax returns.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 That’s pretty much accurate.<\/p>\n
Actually, it should be over 50%, given that their official residence is New York and the Feds… But with some deductions, obviously.\u00a0 But — and this is important.\u00a0 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%.\u00a0 I think Romney… Remember, this didn’t help him.\u00a0 The tax rate calculated that Romney had paid was 14 or 15%. Nothing illegal.<\/p>\n
He had just used every tool available in the existing tax code.\u00a0 What the Clintons have done here, is they knew that these would be the tax returns being released and previous years.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The 2014 income was around $30 million.\u00a0 The 2015 income is around 12 to 13 million.<\/p>\n
Sixty percent of their income is Bill Clinton’s speeches last year.\u00a0 Well, we know that Hillary earned $21 million in two years just doing speeches herself.\u00a0 So the Clintons actually — and this is strategic planning.\u00a0 You can’t fault ’em for it.\u00a0 You can point it out, which I’m doing.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
“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.\u00a0 And then rerelease the tax returns as such that it’s calculated they paid a rate of 42%.\u00a0 That’s more than most Americans pay.\u00a0 You’ll find that the top 1%, that’s been about what they’re paying.\u00a0 You just don’t know that because it’s never reported.<\/p>\n
But there aren’t that many deductions, folks.\u00a0 You can… If you want to lose control of your money, you can shelter a lot of it, but you lose control doing it.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 It had to go places where he lost control of it in order to get the deduction.\u00a0 It had to go to investments here or there.<\/p>\n
![](\"http:\/\/www.rushimg.com\/cimages\/\/media\/images\/hillary-bw2\/1527434-1-eng-GB\/Hillary-BW_large.jpg\")
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.\u00a0 They lose control over a lot of it by virtue of where they pull it.\u00a0 They are putting it places other than the government.\u00a0 They make the decision, “Look, I’d rather this business, that charity, this whatever, this 501(c) get it.<\/p>\n
“I’d rather they get the money rather than the government.”\u00a0 But they don’t get it themselves.\u00a0 It’s a really convoluted thing.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.”<\/p>\n
That’s what they want you to conclude, after you realize that they earned $20 million less in 2015 than the previous year.\u00a0 So you’re supposed to say, “Wow, what…? Man.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 That’s obviously part of the plan.<\/p>\n
Now, here’s one more bit of information about the Clinton tax return for 2015.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
But, of that $1,042,000 the Clintons donated to charity, one million of it went to their own family nonprofit, the Clinton Foundation<\/a>.\u00a0 The documents show that the Clintons earned — oh, I was wrong.\u00a0 It’s $10,745,000 last year, mostly on income from giving speeches.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 It’s so circular, their charitable giving, that it is mind bending.<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0 And the vast majority of their income is giving speeches.\u00a0 Hillary reported some royalties from her memoir.\u00a0 So that is my report on the Clinton tax return.<\/p>\n I want you to listen to Alison Kosik, CNN.\u00a0 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.”\u00a0 Right, because the previous two years she had made 21 million doing speeches, but Wolf probably doesn’t even know that.\u00a0 “So Alison, she didn’t do very many speeches, she didn’t contribute much because she was already running for president –” implication:\u00a0 She was already in government service. She wasn’t taking anything. She’s such a wonderful person; isn’t that right, Alison?<\/p>\n
![](\"http:\/\/www.rushimg.com\/cimages\/\/media\/images\/hillarycrime-family-b\/1527425-1-eng-GB\/HillaryCrime-Family-B.jpg\")
<\/a>KOSIK:\u00a0 It is pretty stunning, though, to see the huge difference in income from 2014 to 2015.\u00a0 I do want to mention one other thing, charities.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 So if you look at last year, almost 10% of gross income was donated to charities.<\/p>\n