Host Mark Halperin: “So, you will release how many years?”
Sanders: “Right, and every election, we’ve released them.”
Halperin: “You’ll release the whole returns, not just a summary?”
Sanders: “We did when he ran for election. Yeah. So, I’ll release this year’s as soon as they are due, and can I have time to go home?”
–exchange, “With All Due Respect” on Bloomberg, April 11, 2016
Jane Sanders, the wife of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, is the keeper of tax records in the household, according to the candidate. Yet she repeated a claim similar to her husband’s recent Four Pinocchio statement that the couple released their full tax returns over several years. (This claim earned the “fact-checkers’ trifecta,” when the three major fact-checking organizations — Washington Post Fact Checker, PolitiFact and FactCheck.org — debunk the same claim.)
We reached out to the Sanders campaign to find out whether any new tax records have been released in the past week, but did not receive a response. The Sanders campaign had told The Washington Post on April 4, 2016, that it has not released other tax returns prior to the 2014 tax summary it released in 2015. We have not found any indication that the campaign has released any new tax returns since then, or that the Sanderses released full tax returns “every election.”
It’s also unclear exactly which election she is referring to when she says, “We did when he ran for election.” (The campaign did not respond to our inquiry.)
Presidential candidates have no legal obligation to release their federal income tax returns, but there has long been a tradition to do so for the sake of transparency. The Tax History Project, a public service initiative from Tax Analysts, has compiled tax returns for presidents, vice presidents and candidates vying for their seats in recent decades.
There is one entry from 2014 available for Sanders on the website of the Tax History Project: a Form 1040 (a summary of his federal income tax return) and a one-page Vermont state income tax return. But this is a summary of his tax filing that gives a snapshot of the couple’s finances, not what is considered a full tax return. Perhaps she is referring to the information filed in his financial disclosures, as required of members of Congress. But as the family’s keeper of tax records, she should know that’s not the same thing as a full tax return.
The Fact Checker Recidivism Watch tracks politicians who repeat claims that we have previously found to be incorrect or false. These posts are short summaries of previous findings, with links to the original fact-check. We welcome reader suggestions.
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