Democratic White House hopeful Joe Biden released his tax returns for the last four years today, just hours before he debates US President Donald Trump, who faces criticism for paying almost no federal tax.
The former vice president and his wife Jill Biden, an educator, paid $299,346 in federal income taxes for 2019, according to forms filed with the Internal Revenue Service and released by Mr Biden's campaign team.
The amount stands in sharp contrast to Mr Trump, who boasts of his success as a billionaire businessman but paid only $750 in federal income taxes in 2016, according to a bombshell report by The New York Times.
Mr Biden paid millions more in taxes in 2018 and 2017, when he and his wife earned $4.5m and $11m, respectively.
The campaign also released the 2019 tax returns for Mr Biden's running mate Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff, showing they paid $1.18m on more than $3.2m in income last year.
The issue of taxation - and Mr Trump's cloudy financial past - is almost certain to come up in the opening presidential debate later tonight in Cleveland.
The New York Times alleged the property mogul turned president paid just $750 in federal income taxes in both the year he won the White House and in 2017, and no federal income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years because he reported losing more money than he made.
Mr Trump immediately dismissed the accusations as "totally fake news".
But the issue has the potential to resonate with voters, particularly working-class Americans, millions of whom are struggling to make ends meet during the coronavirus pandemic and are yet paying more to the government in taxes than the billionaire commander-in-chief.
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Mr Trump and Mr Biden will square off tonight in the first of three scheduled debates, an encounter that will showcase a stark clash of styles and the prospect of a contentious and personal grudge match.
With more than a million Americans already casting early ballots and time running out to change minds or influence the small sliver of undecided voters, the stakes are enormous as the two White House candidates take the stage five weeks before the 3 November election.
The combustible Mr Trump and more low-key Mr Biden will debate an array of urgent political challenges, including the coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 200,000 people in the United States and thrown millions out of work, a brewing battle over Mr Trump's nomination of conservative judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, and continued protests for racial justice.
The encounter could be crucial for Mr Biden, giving him a chance to prove he is a steady hand capable of stepping into the Oval Office and ending the tumult of Mr Trump's first term, strategists said.
Mr Biden has held a consistent lead over Mr Trump in national opinion polls, although surveys in the battleground states that will decide the election show a much closer contest.
