Joe Biden is rich. We know that because he released some tax returns this week, as well as a financial disclosure statement. (The returns are available on the Tax Notes website.)
That Biden is rich shouldn’t surprise anyone. Most politicians are well off compared with their constituents. Members of Congress make $174,000 a year, which may be less than such a position merits (reasonable minds can disagree), but is certainly more than most Americans earn (U.S. household median income in 2017 was $61,372).
More to the point, presidential candidates tend to be pretty rich, too. Of the four leading contenders for the Democratic nomination, all are millionaires (including America’s most famous Democratic socialist, Bernie Sanders). And based on his financial disclosure forms (if not his tax returns), President Trump is doing alright as well.
But if Biden’s wealth is unsurprising, at least one aspect of his personal financial life is notable: He’s never been especially generous with his charitable contributions.
Now, again, this isn't unique to Biden. As Business Insider recently noted, many of the other Democratic candidates are also relatively tightfisted with their contributions.
But Biden’s record is notable for being so long. Tax disclosure is important and laudable, but it's inconvenient for politicians. It tends to underscore facts that candidates would probably like to keep under wraps. And when you do lots of disclosure (21 years of tax returns in Biden’s case), there's plenty of potentially embarrassing stuff on display.
In Biden’s case, his long history of tax disclosure makes plain the small size of his charitable contributions. For most of the past two decades, Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, never donated more than 2 percent of their adjusted gross income to charity. Between 1998 and 2008, their gifts never even reached 1 percent. From 2009 to 2012, they ranged from 1.4 percent to 1.9 percent of AGI, before jumping sharply to 5 percent in 2013. In the following three years, however, the Bidens’ gifts returned to their former range, hovering between 1.5 percent and 2 percent.
In the last two years, however, the Bidens have been giving substantially more: 9.2 percent of AGI in 2017 and 6 percent in 2018. For the cynical, that increase can be explained by Joe Biden’s impending presidential campaign. For the credulous, it may just look like increased generosity from a couple newly flush with cash. (Between 1998 and 2016, the Bidens’ average AGI was $304,227; in 2017 and 2018, it was more than $7.8 million, thanks to book contracts and speaking engagements.)
What should we make of Joe Biden's uneven-but-underwhelming history of charitable giving? Maybe not much. It’s not especially out of line with the donations offered up by rival candidates. And in any case, voters don’t seem to care very much about charitable giving.
Just ask Mitt Romney, one of the most generous candidates in recent history. While running for president in 2012, Romney dragged his feet about releasing his tax returns, but once he did, at least one fact was abundantly clear: He and his wife were very generous. In 2011 the Romneys donated nearly 30 percent of their income to charity (while deducting only part of that amount in a bid to keep their average tax rate over 13 percent.)
And what did Romney get for all that generosity? Many things, no doubt; the psychic benefits of charity are well-established. But one thing he didn’t? Much help at the ballot box.