OPINION | This article contains commentary that reflects the author's opinion.
Liberals lost their collective minds over concerns about President Donald Trump’s tax returns, but they are now hypocritically ignoring questions about Biden’s own taxes.
A bombshell question has been raised by Biden’s taxes: Where is all of the money coming from?
Joe and Jill Biden reported $17 million in income after Biden left office in 2017. However, $13 million is from two S-corps, CelticCapri Corp (his) and Giacoppa Corp (hers).
Despite Biden’s promise to provide “a historic level of transparency,” he has only released his individual tax returns.
By failing to show the tax returns for the S-corporations that the Bidens have setup, this successfully hides details about the source of most of his income.
“So, in reality, readers were left with a smokescreen,” Bob Anderson writes at The Federalist, adding that the Bidens should release their full tax returns including a copy of their S-Corp returns and all partner K-1 forms.
This is a very reasonable question considering Biden’s son, Hunter, is currently under federal investigation for potential violations of tax, money laundering and foreign lobbying laws through his past business relationships overseas. To date, Hunter has not been criminally charged, but his emails and text regularly refer to his father’s involvement in his businesses.
One email exchange reveals Joe Biden directly faxed a college recommendation letter to the president of Brown University on behalf of a Chinese executive whose son wanted to attend the college. The Chinese executive asked Hunter for the big favor, which was followed by large wire transfers.
Some of the massive wire transfers to Hunter were flagged by big banks as “potential criminal activity.” This triggered an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice into Hunter’s activities. A federal grand jury is currently considering possible criminal charges against Hunter.
“Did any of that money, or other overseas income, go to Joe or Jill?” Anderson asks at The Federalist.
In August 2017, one wire receipt showed $100,000 sent from CEFC Infrastructure Investment to Owasco. A copy of a November 2017 check from CEFC Limited revealed $1 million paid to Hudson West III, LLC. Both recipient entities were tied to Hunter.
Anderson also argues that the numbers aren’t adding up. More on this story via The Federalist:
Perhaps sensing smoke starting to build just before the election, USA Today published a “fact check” piece that attempted to support that the Bidens earned “$15.6 million … from speaking fees and book deals” in the years 2017 through 2019 and that “more than $10 million of that total income was profits from Biden’s memoir ‘Promise Me, Dad’ and $3 million in profits from Jill Biden’s book.”
Follow the source link provided to that $10 million number, though, and you’ll end up at Joe Biden’s campaign website with financial disclosure links to only their individual returns — no S-corporation tax returns. So, in reality, readers were left with a smokescreen. (Now the financial disclosure links for 2016, 2017, and 2018 have even been changed to connect to a Democratic National Committee fundraising site via ActBlue rather than the tax documents.)…
As it stands, we’re left to trust USA Today that Jill grossed $3 million (royalties plus about $700,000 from speaking fees) for a book that sold only 7,000 copies in its first week, and that from that book deal she netted more than $1 million in the two years prior to its release, but only $175,319 in the year it was published (2019). It’s possible an advance was paid, but could a publisher have justified that amount?
We are told that Joe netted $12.2 million (after expenses) in the same deal for a book that sold 300,000 copies. Excluding the $4.2 million earned from touring and speaking, that yields $8 million of income that we are to assume came from book royalties (higher if we know his gross revenues before expenses).
For analysis purposes, consider that his book had a retail price of $27 for hardcover and $18 for paperback, and assume a reasonable mix of sales so the average price was $23 (with no discounting). On 300,000 books sold, gross revenues would’ve been just under $7 million. As an author, Joe would’ve likely received about 12 percent of that using a blended royalty rate (15 percent hardcover and 7.5 percent paperback typical from publishers), yielding about $800,000 income. Round it up to $1 million if you prefer. Double it. It’s still not close to $8 million.
Sure, he likely got an advance, but would a publisher have advanced that kind of money to an author whose prior work, “Promises to Keep,” sold only 49,000 copies?
So many questions.
Rather than ask for proof of sources of income, the media has been stuck in a repeating cycle of reporting about whether Joe and Jill underpaid payroll taxes. That’s a valid question, but it may miss the much larger one: Where did all of that money come from after Biden left office?
To that end, tax returns are a valuable investigative source document. Since the days of Al Capone, the rule has been clear: Don’t ever fail to pay taxes on any income, even if shady. It’s the easiest conviction for a prosecutor. So it’s logical that all income would be reported, and for any potentially over the ethical or legal line, an upstream S-Corporation would serve as the perfect mechanism to obscure it from view.
