Scott Brown, Elizabeth Warren spar over tax returns

Massachusetts US Senate race, already framed in terms of electing the best guardian for the middle class, will be fought by two candidates in the nation’s top income group.


Tax returns released today show that Republican Scott Brown’s family income more than doubled to nearly $840,000 after he was elected in 2010, while his likely Democratic challenger, Elizabeth Warren, has had nearly $1 million in joint earnings two of the past four years.

During the most recent filing year, she was in the top 1 percent of earners while he was in the top 2 percent. Brown joined Warren in the uppermost echelon in 2010.


“Gail and I are blessed,” Brown told reporters this morning as he and his wife, television reporter Gail Huff, visited Roslindale. “We’ve worked very hard over the last 25 years. We’re a two-income family. We’ve saved and saved and tried to provide a good family effort to provide for ourselves and our kids. We wish that for everybody.”


The senator said the returns confirm what has been previously revealed in state and federal financial disclosure forms. And while his campaign has branded Warren an elitist, Brown said, “I have never commented on her wealth, ever.


When asked if her own wealth made her unable to empathize with the average voter, Warren said, “I’ve been out there all my adult life working on behalf of middle-class families.”


Brown’s recent rise in income was largely thanks to the advance and sales for his best-selling memoir, “Against All Odds,” which he penned after his election.


Brown and his wife, television anchor Gail Huff, together earned $2,565,660 for 2006 through 2011. Last year, they contributed $16,487 to charity, or 3.2 percent of their income.


Brown took a $1,401 deduction for “TV makeup and grooming” in 2011 as part of a $6,901 tax deduction for varied expenses which included $1,268 for book promotions and photos and $716 for gifts. His deductions include $2,275 for “entertainment” in 2009 and $225 for “recording devices” in 2010.


Brown owns six homes: three condos in Boston, a vacation home in New Hampshire, a condo in Washington D.C., and his Wrentham home.


Brown, who urged Warren to be more transparent, refused to allow copies of the tax information to leave the office and instead required reporters to review his tax returns at his headquarters and take notes. The campaign did not allow tax attorneys to come in and view the returns.


Warren made four years of her returns available online this morning at elizabethwarren.com.

In the state Democrats’ ad, Brown is painted as an A-list Washington millionaire clad in tuxedos and expensive barn jackets.


“When Scott Brown went to Washington, Massachusetts families barely knew him,” Massachusetts Democratic Party Chair John Walsh said in a statement released with the video. “Now, it’s clear there’s a millionaire under that $675 barn jacket, with as much as $100,000 in big oil and big bank stocks and real estate estimate estimated at more than $1.6 million.”


The 40-second long spot and prepared statement cites some of Brown’s voting record in the Senate and notes that Brown owns six homes and is worth millions.