Senator Harris Earned More as an Author than as an US Senator
Hours before the first Presidential 2020 Debate on September 29, 2020, which turned out to be an disaster, the Biden campaign released the federal and state tax returns of Joe Biden and Biden`s Vice President running mate Senator Kamala Harris. Vice President Biden released his 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019 tax returns, while Senator Harris released her 2019 tax return. You can view these tax returns on the joebiden.com site located here: https://joebiden.com/financial-disclosure/# .
When running for President in 2019, Senator Harris had already released her previous 14 years of tax returns dating back to her 2004 tax return. Senator Harris ended her bid to be president in December 2019. Now she is the first women of color to be nominated for vice president.
Let’s break down her 2019 Federal Tax Return as released on the joebiden.com website.
Senator Harris filed a Married Filing Jointly tax return (image above) with her husband Douglas C. Emhoff. Mr. Emhoff is a lawyer (entertainment litigator) and partner at the law firm DLA Piper LLP. He had been working with DLA Piper since 2017 but since Kamala was nominated for vice president, Mr. Emhoff took a leave of absence from DLA Piper.
Mr. Emhoff’s daughter, Ella R Emhoff, (image above) is claimed as a dependent on the tax return. In 2019 Ella was 20 years old, but a child between the ages of 19 to 24 can be claimed as a dependent if that child is a full time Student. In 2019 Ella was a student at Parsons School of Design in New York. You can check out Ella’s Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/ellaemhoff/
Now we get to the meat of the tax return, The Money. Line 1 (image above) is where one reports W-2 income. Income that you earn as an employee. Everything reported here on Line 1 is Kamala’s W-2 income for her job as an US Senator, as indicated in STMT 2: (image below) $157,327.00
However, a US Senator earns $174,000 per year (image above). You can view the US Senate salaries here: https://www.senate.gov/senators/SenateSalariesSince1789.htm The difference between $174,000 — $157,327 = $16,673. I believe this $16,673 is what Kalama contributes to her Thrift Savings Plan (TSP). The TSP is a retirement savings plan for federal employees (including members of congress). It is a defined contribution plan, similar to a 401(k). The max contribution limit to a TSP in 2019 was $19,000.
The next line (line 2) is Interest Income (image above). Interest earned in savings and checking accounts in banks and other Financial Institutions. The couple earned a total of $12,341 of interest income.
When we look at Schedule B (image above), we can see a breakdown where all the interest came from. They have accounts in Wells Fargo and Merrill Lynch. One can not determine who owns which accounts without looking at the 1099-B’s from the banks. Except I can be sure that the interest from DLA Piper LLP is for Mr. Emhoff.
The Wells Fargo accounts are interesting because Kamala has had some strange dealings with Wells Fargo in the past. In 2016 as Attorney General of California she investigated Wells Fargo for privacy violations. She claimed that Wells Fargo was breaking state law by not quickly telling customers that their telephone calls were being recorded. She sued Wells Fargo as Attorney General and Wells Fargo settled for $8.5 million. Then later in 2019, a former Wells Fargo senior vice president of government and community relations, Miguel Bustos, hosted a fundraiser for Senator Harris.
Nothing happening on Line 6 (above). But it does tell me that Senator Harris and Mr. Emhoff are not trading stocks on Robinhood or at least they did not sell any stocks in 2019. But I believe that they do not own any stocks.
The next line, Line 7a (image above). This is where Mr. Emoff reports his income and Senator Harris reports her profit from books sales for the year 2019. $3.1 million is reported here. We can look further in the tax return to see a breakdown on this $3.1 million.
This is Kamala’s profit from her book sales, $264,825 (image above) . We need to go to the Schedule C to see more detail about her book sales.
On the Schedule C, Part 1, line 1 (image above) Kamala’s Gross Sales from her 2 books, “The Truths We Hold: An American Journey”, was $464,500. If you are interested in buying her book (Note: This link is an Amazon affiliate link) you can click here. And her second book that she published in 2019 was a children’s book titled, “Superheroes are Everywhere”. If you are interested in buying her children’s book (Note: This link is an Amazon affiliate link) you can click here.
On Part II (image above), Expenses, line 10: Kamala paid $199,675 in commissions and fees. From the tax return we do not know the breakdown of the commissions and fees. I am not familiar with the book publishing business. But I would have to believe that part of these commissions were paid to a possible Ghostwriter of these books. Do United State Senators have time to write their own books?
On Part II, (image above) line 29: After the expenses for writing the books, her profit in 2019 is $264,825. More than the Senator’s salary of $170,000. The profit from her books in 2019 is 64% greater than her Senator’s salary. In 2018, Harris reported a profit of $320,000 from her first book. Thus, in total, more than half of million dollars in profit from her books so far. I do not know how well her book sales are doing in 2020.
If we go back to Schedule 1 (image above), on line 5 there is an amount of $2,843,272. This is Mr. Emhoff’s income. We need to look at Schedule E to see a breakdown of this income.
On the Schedule E (image above), Mr. Emhoff earned $2,759,431 from his law firm partnership with DLA Piper LLP. Mr. Emhoff also received $115,258 from Venable LLP. Venable is also a law firm that has offices across the United States, including Washing DC and San Francisco. The story behind Venable: In 2000 Mr. Emhoff opened his own firm. That firm was then acquired by Venable in 2006 and Mr. Emhoff worked for Venable in different management positions until he joined DLA Piper in 2017. Now, during the Presidential campaign, Mr. Emhoff has taken a leave of absence from DLA Piper.
The last two items we will look at is how much did Senator Harris and Mr. Emhoff pay for household help and how much did they contribute to charities. These two items are a favorite tax topic of the media.
If we look at the Schedule H (image above) we can see a total amount paid of $31,123 to one or more household employees.
On page 2 of the Schedule H (image above), it appears that they have household help in both California and in Washington DC.
On statement 11 (above image), Line 11 shows the total amount given to charities in 2019, $35,390. This is 1.2% of their taxable income of $3,018,127. If we compare that to what the Bidens gave in 2019: The Bidens taxable income in 2019 was $944,737 and the Bidens gave $14,700 to charities. This is a percentage of 1.6%. Data by IRS reports that on average, people contribute about 4.0% of their taxable income to charities.
The biggest take for me in analyzing this tax return is that United States Senators make good money capitalizing on their public status. Mainly by writing books. Writing books while still serving as a member of the Senate.
Here is a list of current sitting US Senators (116th Congress 2019–2020) who have written books (some of these Senators wrote their book before becoming a Senator:
- Lamar Alexander
- Michael Bennet
- Marsha Blackburn
- Cory Booker
- Sherrod Brown
- Maria Cantwell
- Susan Collins
- Tom Cotton
- Ted Cruz
- Dianne Feinstein
- Kirsten Gillibrand
- Lindsey Graham
- Kamala Harris
- Josh Hawley
- James Inhofe
- Doug Jones
- Angus S. King, Jr.
- Amy Klobuchar
- Mike Lee
- Edward J. Markey
- Mitch McConnell
- Martha McSally
- Robert Menendez
- Christopher Murphy
- Patty Murray
- Rand Paul
- Rob Portman
- Mitt Romney
- Marco Rubio
- Bernard Sanders
- Ben Sasse
- Charles Schumer
- Tim Scott
- Kyrsten Sinema
- Debbie Stabenow
- Jon Tester
- Patrick Toomey
- Elizabeth Warren
- Sheldon Whitehouse
