President Trump’s tax overhaul reportedly led to “significant savings” for Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand — who became the first 2020 presidential candidate to release her tax returns on Wednesday.
While the exact amount that she saved is unclear — due to Gillibrand reporting a higher income in 2017 than in 2018 — accountants who reviewed her tax returns told Bloomberg News that the New York senator appeared to save several thousand dollars.
Gillibrand had condemned Trump’s sweeping tax law in the past as an example of “Washington’s culture of soft-corruption at its worst.”
“We need to start rewarding work in this country again – not doling out lavish tax cuts for giant companies,” she blasted in 2017.
Gillibrand and her husband, Jonathan, reported $167,634 from her congressional salary and another $50,000 in business income from her book deal. They paid $29,170 in federal taxes.
Accountants Michael Knight and Steven Rossman — who work in Connecticut and Pennsylvania, respectively, at two different firms — reviewed Gillibrand’s tax returns for Bloomberg and offered a summary.
According to Knight, the senator saw “significant savings” from the GOP tax bill and Rossman says one of the reasons for this is that she and her husband had previously fallen under the alternative minimum tax — which applies to taxpayers with high economic income by setting a limit on the amount of tax benefits they can receive.
“It helps to ensure that those taxpayers pay at least a minimum amount of tax,” the IRS says on its website.
Trump’s tax overhaul all but erased the AMT, and because of this, Gillibrand was able to pay her taxes using the regular system, Bloomberg reports.
That means the senator was able to write off $10,000 of her $35,606 state and local tax bill — ultimately leading to the new tax cut, according to Rossman.
The tax returns that Gillibrand released Wednesday date back to 2007, when she first took office as a congresswoman.
“For public servants, releasing your tax returns shows the American people that you work only for them, not the powerful,” she said in a statement.
“We can’t fix what’s broken in Washington unless we’re brave enough to fundamentally change the way our government works, and detox our politics from the influence of unaccountable money,” Gillibrand added on Twitter. “Join me in asking every 2020 candidate to release their tax returns.”