Erin Schaff/The New York Times
WASHINGTON — Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, disclosed 10 years of tax returns on Monday, providing a more detailed look at his finances than what he offered when he ran for the White House in 2016.
The returns show that Mr. Sanders’s earnings shot up after his first presidential bid, when he built up a vast national following. He and his wife, Jane O’Meara Sanders, reported income that topped $1 million in 2016 and 2017, lifted by proceeds from his books.
The couple had an adjusted gross income of $561,293 in 2018, according to their most recent tax return. Mr. Sanders had about $393,000 in book income last year, and he and his wife reported giving nearly $19,000 to charity.
Their federal taxes came to $145,840, for an effective federal tax rate of 26 percent.
Mr. Sanders’s higher income in recent years has created some political awkwardness for the senator, who in his 2016 presidential campaign frequently railed against “millionaires and billionaires” and their influence over the political process.
His income now puts him within the top 1 percent of taxpayers, according to data from the Internal Revenue Service.
“These tax returns show that our family has been fortunate,” Mr. Sanders said in a statement. “I am very grateful for that, as I grew up in a family that lived paycheck to paycheck and I know the stress of economic insecurity.”
The issue of tax returns has been in the spotlight because of President Trump’s refusal to release his own, a position that defies decades of tradition. House Democrats are now demanding to see his returns.
[Sign up for our politics newsletter and join the conversation around the 2020 presidential race.]Mr. Sanders’s handling of the issue received attention in the 2016 race, when Hillary Clinton, his main rival for the Democratic nomination, pushed him to divulge years of…
