Have Bloomberg & Steyer Been Totally Honest About Taxes?

W e know Donald Trump has been dishonest about his taxes. During the 2016 campaign, he promised to release his tax returns. He has still not done that over three years later.

The two billionaires running for the Democratic presidential nomination have excoriated Trump for that, and bragged about releasing their own tax returns. Is that true? Well, partially.

Here is what the fact-checkers for The Washington Post have to say about that:

The two billionaires in the Democratic primary were not as transparent with their tax returns as they let on in these remarks.

Bloomberg, who is ranked as the 10th-richest person in the world by Forbes, never “released” his tax returns while he was mayor in the traditional sense of the word. Instead, he allowed reporters to view redacted versions of his returns for a few hours every year.

Traditionally, candidates for high office in New York and throughout the country release full, unredacted versions of their tax returns for public consumption, so there’s a big difference between what Bloomberg did and the norm. “One year when a reporter rolled in a photo-copy machine to the viewing room, the photo-copy machine got the heave-ho,” a Wall Street Journal editor who covered Bloomberg as mayor tweeted.

Steyer has released tax returns showing he earned more than $1 billion over nine years, but “he withheld nearly every page that showed where all his money came from,” according to the Los Angeles Times.