Beto O'Rourke did not earn more than $1 million a year selling a book on launching a democratic socialist "revolution," but like fellow 2020 presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), O'Rourke did just fine over the past 10 years, according to a decade's worth of tax returns he released Monday night.
O'Rourke and his wife, Amy, earned more than $360,000 in 2017, the latest year in the filings. Their income included O'Rourke's $162,011 congressional salary, $53,000 Amy O'Rourke earned as an education consultant, and more than $11,000 from Stanton Street Technology, an internet company O'Rourke started in 1999. They paid an effective tax rate of 22 percent.
O'Rourke furnished the hundreds of pages of tax returns just after aforementioned millionaire author Sanders released 10 years of his tax returns. Like Sanders, O'Rourke noted that President Trump has declined to release any of his tax returns, despite promising to do so while running for president. "If he must be compelled through a subpoena to do so, so be it," O'Rourke said Monday morning, after a town hall in Charlotte. "But everyone who runs to seek that office should release their taxes."