It’s a line you’ve heard drop out of President Joe Biden’s mouth a thousand times, if you’ve been paying attention: The wealthy need to start paying their “fair share” of taxes.
Except it wasn’t something he should have been bringing up at the State of the Union — not this year, anyway. But, this is Joe Biden, a human Kool-Aid man barging through the brick wall of good ideas.
So, naturally, we had this:
“It’s my goal to cut the federal deficit another $3 trillion more by making big corporations and the very wealthy finally beginning to pay their fair share,” Biden said.
“Look, I’m a capitalist. If you want to make, you can make a million or millions of bucks, that’s great. Just pay your fair share in taxes,” he continued. “A fair tax code is how we invest in the things and make this country great: health care, education, defense and so much more.”
Furthermore, he bragged about making corporations “pay their fair share.”
“The way to make the tax code fair is to make big corporations and the very wealthy begin to pay their fair share. Remember, in 2020, 55 of the biggest companies in America made $40 billion and paid zero in federal income taxes. Zero,” he said, adding: “Not anymore.
“Thanks to the law I wrote and signed, big companies now have to pay a minimum of 15 percent. But that’s still less than working people pay in federal taxes. It’s time to raise the corporate minimum tax to at least 21 percent so every big corporation finally begins to pay their fair share.”
“The way to make the tax code fair is to make big corporations and the very wealthy begin to pay their fair share,” President Biden says in his State of the Union address. https://t.co/Qeu0XYbg9x pic.twitter.com/WVL3EiYzEw
— CNBC (@CNBC) March 8, 2024
Now, of course, this raises all kinds of questions regarding where the Biden administration thinks getting individuals and businesses to pay their “fair share” stops; we’ve heard this rhetoric so long that one suspects that a “fairer” share, to the administration and other Democrats, will always necessarily be bigger.
However, one thing made this kind of talk especially troubling during this State of the Union address, as several GOP congressmen pointed out on social media: the tax issues of the president’s son, Hunter Biden.
Let’s get this straight.
Joe Biden is currently yelling for the American people to pay their fair share of taxes.
But his son committed TAX EVASION.
Now Joe Biden wants to raise OUR taxes?
— Congressman Byron Donalds (@RepDonaldsPress) March 8, 2024
Hey Joe, how about starting by making Hunter pay HIS fair share? pic.twitter.com/hCaLVgfFbl
— Senator Ron Johnson (@SenRonJohnson) March 8, 2024
Last time I checked, Hunter Biden still owes $1.4M in taxes.
Joe, does Hunter have to pay his fair share? pic.twitter.com/5xBH0H8Otx
— Jim Banks (@Jim_Banks) March 8, 2024
Now, it’s worth noting that Hunter Biden hasn’t been convicted of anything. However, the charges unveiled by special counsel David Weiss in December, after the first son’s plea deal fell apart during the summer, certainly don’t look good.
In a news release, Weiss’ office said that Hunter, during his most wayward years, “spent millions of dollars on an extravagant lifestyle rather than paying his tax bills.”
The special counsel’s office also said that the president’s son “willfully failed to pay his 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019 taxes on time, despite having access to funds to pay some or all of these taxes” and that “when he did finally file his 2018 returns, included false business deductions in order to reduce the very substantial tax liability he faced as of February 2020.”
Will Hunter Biden be convicted?
The federal grand jury returned an indictment on three counts of felony tax evasion and filing a false return, along with six other misdemeanor counts of failure to pay.
The charges carry “a maximum penalty of 17 years in prison,” the special counsel’s office said.
Now, here’s the kicker: An outstanding tax bill of $1.4 million is indicative of someone raking in massive amounts of income. That income, it just so happened, came from lucrative foreign business deals that mostly occurred because Hunter happens to have the last name Biden, not from any particular expertise the first son has in, say, the Ukrainian energy sector.
Yet, for years — even after the indictment — the president simply refused to acknowledge that he even knew about his son’s foreign business dealings, much less his alleged tax delinquencies:
BREAKING: Biden says “it’s a bunch of lies” that he interacted with his son Hunter’s foreign business associates pic.twitter.com/RzoTSvn3lJ
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) December 6, 2023
So, what about Hunter? What’s his “fair share”?
After all, the president keeps on prodding Americans as if they’re not opening their pocketbooks up already. What about his son, then? Why not hold him up as an example?
Simple: Because, like any bureaucrat, Joe Biden believes that the rules are for thee, not for me — or, in this case, my son.
