Biden campaign creates ‘Trump tax calculator’ after NYT report

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s campaign on Tuesday released a “Trump tax calculator” in response to reports that President Trump paid $750 in income tax in 2016 and 2017.

“Do you pay more or less in federal income taxes than our ‘billionaire’ President? Use this calculator to find out,” the site reads. The tool invites users to enter the amount they paid in 2017 and produces the number minus $750.

“Mad? Us too. Join our campaign to elect Joe Biden and make ‘billionaires’ like Donald Trump pay their fair share,” the site adds.

The tool comes on the heels of a New York Times report that the president also paid no income tax for 10 of the last 15 years. It also found an ongoing battle between the IRS and Trump over the legitimacy of a $72.9 million tax refund he received.

Trump has since attacked the Times’s reporting and defended his financial practices but has not refuted any of the findings, claiming the audit prevents him from releasing his full tax returns. Individuals under audit are free to release their tax returns under the law.

The Biden campaign has seized on the Times report, with both Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), releasing their 2019 tax returns on Tuesday afternoon. The returns showed that Biden and his wife Jill paid $299,346 in taxes last year, while Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff paid about $1,185,628.

“Trump’s tax returns and what we learned from that reporting I think reinforces what we already knew about Donald Trump, which is that he looks down on working people,” Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s deputy campaign manager and communications director, told reporters on a conference call Tuesday afternoon. “It reinforces how much of a choice there is in this campaign between Scranton and Park Avenue.”

Trump has defended his tax and business practices following the Times story, tweeting Monday that he “paid many millions of dollars in taxes but was entitled, like everyone else, to depreciation & tax credits.”

“Also, if you look at the extraordinary assets owned by me, which the Fake News hasn’t, I am extremely under leveraged — I have very little debt compared to the value of assets,” he added.

The Biden campaign released Biden and Harris’s returns hours before the former vice president is set to face off against Trump in the first presidential debate on Tuesday night.