'Healthy' Hillary Clinton, Tim Kaine Release Tax Returns, Call On Donald Trump To Do Same

The Hillary Clinton campaign on Friday released her 2015 tax return, which showed that the Democratic nominee and her husband paid a 34.2 percent effective federal tax rate and donated nearly 10 percent of their adjusted gross income to charity.

The return was released as part of a document dump that included the last 10 years of returns from her running mate Tim Kaine, a detailed list of income from speeches Clinton made in 2013 and a physician's note saying that Clinton had an excellent bill of health. Some in far-right circles have dubiously questioned whether the 68-year-old Clinton may be in declining health using flimsy evidence.

Kaine and his wife, former Virginia Secretary of Education Anne Holton, paid a 20.3 effective federal tax rate and over the last 10 years have donated 7.5 percent of their adjusted gross income to charity.

Effective tax rate is a person's total taxes paid divided by their total taxable income.

The release was meant as much to highlight the two candidates' financial standings as it was to put more pressure on Donald Trump, who has yet to release any of his tax returns, to do the same. The practice is not mandated for presidential candidates, but every major-party nominee has done so since the 1970s. Trump's running mate Mike Pence has also not made any of his tax returns public.

Hillary Clinton and former president Bill Clinton have made their tax returns public every year dating back to 1977.

A Trump tax return release would clarify two central questions that have dogged his campaign thus far: How successful of a businessman is he? And how much of his personal money has he donated to charity?

Trump may be avoiding releasing his tax filing because he has paid little to no taxes at all in recent years — something that would not sit well with voters even if it is completely legal.

Len Green, an accountant and chairman of the Green Group, a tax and accounting advisory firm, told The New York Times that “It’s both possible and legal that Donald Trump would pay little or no income tax" because of the massive tax breaks for developers in the federal tax code that allow them to report their income at near zero, if not a loss.

Trump says he will not release his tax returns while he is undergoing an IRS audit, though the IRS has said he would be allowed to make them public.

"Donald Trump is hiding behind fake excuses and backtracking on his previous promises to release his tax returns," Clinton campaign spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri said in a release. "He has failed to provide the public with the most basic financial information disclosed by every major candidate in the last 40 years. What is he trying to hide?”

Clinton's campaign on Friday also released an ad showing prominent Republicans calling for Trump to release his tax returns. It includes a clip of Trump himself calling on Mitt Romney to do so during Romney's presidential run four years go:

Clinton's physician statement comes as some right-wing figures have speculated on her health using especially suspect indicators. The Drudge Report earlier this week published a months-old Getty photo of Clinton being helped up stairs meant to suggest she is getting frail. The photo was from February after Clinton had slipped on the stairs.

Fox News host Sean Hannity, meanwhile, has been hammering Clinton's health on his show all week, speculating wildly that she might have suffered a stroke because of the way she bobbed her head at reporters. He said her laugh appears “seizure-esque."

Clinton was treated for a blood clot in 2013 after suffering a concussion. The letter from Dr. Lisa Bardack says Clinton "is in excellent physical condition and fit to serve as President of the United States."

See all of the documents released here. We've embedded Clinton's 2015 return, her physician's statement and her speech income in the document below:

Image via Rick Uldrichs, Patch

Allen McDuffee contributed to this report.