Tax Returns

While the Democratic Party candidates are busy knocking the stuffing out of each other in their nomination race, John McCain is running through a number of different actions designed to make him look more open and honest, insofar as that is possible for a politician of any stripe. As part of this, his wife has released her tax returns from 2006, which indicate an overall income of $6 million in that calendar year.

Most of the income that contributed to the $6 million figure came in from investments in real estate and family trust funds, which in turn resulted in her paying a total of $1.7 million in taxes across that whole income amount. It was rather easy to track this in terms of Cindy McCain’s taxes because of the fact that both husband and wife have signed a prenuptial agreement that prevents them from combining income information in the way that many other couples would normally do.

Ultimately, there were parts of her income that came from wages, but they amounted to a very small $300,000 amount when compared with the overall income that she reported. These types of wages have been taxed at 35% ever since the Bush tax cuts went through and under McCain’s plan to make them permanent, that would be the going rate from now on.