(Bloomberg) Senator Ted Cruz and his wife, Heidi, paid $1.5 million in federal income taxes from 2011 through 2014 on adjusted gross income totaling more than $5 million, according to partial tax returns released in e-mails to reporters by the Republican presidential candidate’s campaign Saturday.
The couple’s average federal tax rate over the four-year period was 29.9 percent. But because the releases didn’t include schedules that would detail their sources of income or the deductions they claimed, the returns provide comparatively scant information.
For example, it’s not clear how much of the income can be attributed to Heidi Cruz, who works as an investment manager for Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in Houston. The bank has said she’s taking an unpaid leave of absence during her husband’s presidential campaign. The salary for a U.S. senator is $174,000 a year. Also unclear from the disclosures: the couple’s contributions to charity.
The Cruz campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Earnings Decline
From the documents—which are the first two pages of each return the couple filed over the four-year period—it’s clear that the Cruzes’ earnings took a hit after 2011, when they reported $1.7 million in adjusted gross income. In 2012, the year Ted Cruz was elected as the junior senator from Texas, they reported $1.1 million, and then in 2013, $970,193. By 2014, their adjusted gross income had rebounded to $1.2 million.
In each return filed over the period, Cruz and his wife indicated that they had sought extended time to file and had prepaid certain amounts. It’s not clear from the returns, which did not disclose the relevant statements, which financial dealings or years the extensions covered.
In 2014, the couple indicated that they paid $166,887 alongside their request for a filing extension. For 2013, the figure was $85,000; in both 2012 and 2011 it was $45,000.
Ted Cruz, 45, won the Iowa caucuses but has found himself grappling with Senator Marco Rubio, of Florida, for second place behind front-runner Donald Trump in subsequent contests. Cruz’s campaign released his tax information late Saturday, hours after Rubio made a similar release of partial information.
Partial Information
Cruz told reporters that he was releasing only partial information because that’s what Rubio did.
“If Marco wants to release the full thing for the recent years, I’m happy to do so as well,” Cruz said, according to a report by The Texas Tribune. "We just did it to match what the other candidates are doing. This is a competitive race.”
In a release, Cruz called on Trump to release his tax returns as well.
“It’s possible Trump has been a significant donor to left-wing organizations, such as Planned Parenthood, which would seriously undermine his claim to be pro-life,” Cruz said in the statement.
However, if Trump were to release the same level of detail that Cruz released on Saturday night, no one could tell which charities had received money from him.
Trump said on Thursday that he is being audited and won’t release his tax returns until the audit is over.
In releasing just partial tax information, Cruz’s campaign lags that of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner, who released full returns for several years. Similarly, Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee, released full tax returns for a limited number of years.
