About 3 months ago, when Marco Rubio’s credit card ‘problem’ was making headlines, I wrote a diary about it:
Why is Marco Rubio so incredibly poor?
(I was properly chastised for using the term ‘poor’ in a way that was demeaning to people who are truly poor, and I agree that ‘broke’ is a far better word.)
I highly suggest reading that diary, as this one builds on it with recently released data.
Here’s Marco’s income and tax table, updated for the past 5 years:
| YEAR | Agi | tax paid | % of agi |
|---|---|---|---|
2000 | 82,710 | 11,769 | 14.2 |
| 2001 | 89,879 | 13,883 | 15.4 |
| 2002 | 124,721 | 21,661 | 17.4 |
| 2003 | 122,718 | 17,414 | 14.2 |
| 2004 | 301,864 | 71,361 | 23.6 |
| 2005 | 330,106 | 76,739 | 23.2 |
| 2006 | 318,789 | 59,834 | 18.8 |
| 2007 | 308,285 | 54,423 | 17.7 |
| 2008 | 399,187 | 86,010 | 21.5 |
| 2009 | 317,531 | 60,611 | 19.1 |
| 2010 | 183,826 | 17,198 | 9.4 |
| 2011 | 276,059 | 46,500 | 16.8 |
| 2012 | 929,439 | 254,694 | 27.4 |
| 2013 | 566,780 | 143,034 | 25.2 |
| 2014 | 335,561 | 64,666 | 19.3 |
| total | 4,687,455 | 999,797 | 21.3 |
So in 15 years, little Marco Rubio made over $4.6 million — that’s $312,497 per year, or, if you prefer, that’s $245,844 per year AFTER ALL TAXES (Florida has no state income tax).
Even after making all that money, he has almost no savings, no retirement savings (he even cashed out his only IRA in 2014, paying the 10% penalty), less than $160,000 saved for his 4 kids’ college, and a house he bought 10 years ago.
Here’s his 2014 tax return… or at least the little piece of it that he actually released. It’s mostly remarkable for what it hides, not what it shows:
Line 7 shows that in addition to his $174,370 salary as a US senator, Marco also draws about $23,000 for teaching at a college in Florida.
Lines 8a and 9a and 13 show how little he has in investments — no real dividends or interest earned, and no capital gains.
Line 12 is residual income from his book.
Line 16b — boom! Marco Rubio liquidates his retirement savings. (We know this was all he had saved from looking at his Senate financial disclosure statements).
Line 17… well, we don’t know much about this $40,301, because he hasn’t released his Schedule E. This line can hold almost anything… rental real estate, any kind of business…. absolutely no way to tell what this income is without that pesky Schedule E.
And now……. Page TWO! (Do you miss Paul Harvey as much as I do? I know he was a conservative, but he was a good guy)
Line 40 — Itemized Deductions — of course Marco didn’t release his Schedule A, so we have very little visibility into what those deductions were for, but here we can make at least one educated…. deduction, if you will:
Marco bought a house in 2005 for $550,000 with a 6.5% mortgage and payments of about $3,475 per month. 9 years later, the tax deductible interest part of that payment was still about $2,600, or $31,200 per year.
And that is not all…. at the same time, Marco got a home equity line of credit of $135,000 with interest of 7.25%. Assuming the standard 20-year term, in 2014 the interest on that loan would be about $600, or $7,200 per year.
So we know that Marco is paying about $38,400 per year in interest on his home mortgages, and it’s a safe bet he’s deducting all of that amount. If he’s not, he’s a far worse money manager than I’m claiming.
Total itemized deductions of $53,329 minus $38,400 mortgage interest = $14,929 that he might have donated to charity….. but wait!
What about property taxes, you ask? (good question!)
Assuming his house is worth no more than he paid for it, and subtracting the Florida homestead exemption of $50,000, he’s paying about $6,400 per year in property taxes.
$14,929 — $6,400 = $8,529 left for other deductions, including tax preparation, job expenses…. oh, and charitable contributions.
Moving along…..
LIne 45 shows Marco got nicked just a little bit by the AMT — that’s the Alternative Minimum Tax, which was created a few decades ago to rein in abuse of itemized deductions and other stuff. I won’t try to analyze this one, because it’s incredibly complex and we don’t know nearly enough to figure it out.
Line 59 — boom! That’s the 10% tax penalty — $6,824 — that Marco paid to liquidate his ENTIRE retirement savings of $68,240, at age 43, in the middle of a 5 year period when he earned over $2.5 million. Yeah, I just can’t get over this one — stupidest move ever?
Line 60a — looks like they hired a maid, or au pair, or nanny or something….. that first showed up in 2009, and every year since then. I guess 4 kids is a bit much to raise on your own?
And one last little nugget…. in spite of being an attorney, and a smart guy, and having a paid tax preparer who works for a major firm, Marco still couldn’t figure out how to get enough tax withheld to cover his liability, and ended up $34,563 short. For that error, he had to pay $522 in penalties:
A quick looks shows he’s paid a penalty every year since at least 2010 — over $2,000 in 2013 alone, when he under-withheld by over $131,000. What kind of idiot is this guy?
There’s lots more — I only looked at his mostly incomplete 2014 return — but my wife is wanting me to get going… lots to do down here in The Villages, so I’ll let you digest this.
And leave you with the still unanswered question:
Why the heck is Marco Rubio so broke?
Cheers.