Donald Trump and Kamala Harris during the presidential debate. Photo / Matthew Hatcher, AFP
One is among the richest men ever to hold the US presidency. Another would be among the least wealthy vice-presidents in recent memory.
The contrast between former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, is unusual. For much of our nation’s history, the major candidates for the White House have often been far wealthier than the average American.
Walz is “very ordinary economically,” said Julian Zelizer, a political history professor at Princeton University who studies American presidents. “That’s different from what we’ve seen for a while.”
Walz, who holds no investments outside retirement savings, is worth about US$1 million ($1.6m) – a lower net worth than about six out of 10 adults in his demographic of college-educated married people ages 50 to 64. By contrast, fellow vice-presidential candidate Senator JD Vance, a Republican from Ohio who grew up in poverty, is now a multimillionaire. So is the Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris: she earned a steady income as a public servant and married a wealthy lawyer. And Trump is a real estate tycoon whose net worth runs into the billions.
Megan Gorman, managing partner at Chequers Financial Management and author of an upcoming book about presidential wealth, described money as “a way we can gauge a person’s values and priorities. Depending on who you are and how you grew up, you may value different things like risk, debt, pensions or security”.
To assemble financial profiles of the four candidates, The Washington Post examined their financial disclosures through the years, both while campaigning and while serving in elected roles. In addition, The Post looked at tax returns where available: Harris and Walz have voluntarily released their tax returns, while Trump and Vance have not. (Some of Trump’s returns have, however, been published by Congress and the news media.)
Here’s what we know about the candidates’ finances.
Harris, who attended Howard University and UC Law San Francisco (then called UC Hastings), served as Attorney General of California and District Attorney of San Francisco before being elected to the US Senate in 2016. She made a steady income in her decades as a public servant, where salaries are often set by law. In 2014, she married Douglas Emhoff, a lawyer in Los Angeles who regularly reported more than US$1m in annual income before leaving his job when Harris was elected Vice President in 2020. With Emhoff’s new job teaching at Georgetown Law, the pair of successful lawyers still make well above the median salary in the United States, which was nearly US$60,000 in the second quarter of this year.
Salary: As Vice President, Harris will make US$284,600 in 2024, an amount set by executive order. She and Emhoff reported a combined salary income of nearly US$400,000 on their 2023 tax return.
Investment income: Harris and Emhoff reported just over US$50,000 in taxable interest from Wells Fargo bank accounts on their 2023 tax return. The pair also hold more than US$2m in different investment and retirement funds, including in several ETFs, or funds that invest in multiple stocks.
Real estate: Harris has a mortgage of between US$1m and US$5m, according to her most recent financial disclosure form filed in May and covering 2023. Forbes reports that she and Emhoff own a multimillion-dollar house in Los Angeles.
Royalties: Harris made more than US$450,000 in royalties during her first year as Vice President for her 2019 memoir, The Truths We Hold, and a children’s book, Superheroes Are Everywhere.
Taxes: Harris has regularly published her tax returns. The filings show that before she took office as Vice President, she and Emhoff used to pay very high tax bills – more than US$1m in 2019, and more than half a million dollars in 2020 and 2021. With the loss of Emhoff’s law firm earnings, their tax bills shrank to under US$100,000 per year. The filings also reveal their charitable contributions, which total more than US$20,000 each year of her vice presidency and include causes ranging from California universities to Jewish organisations to DC Central Kitchen.
Other disclosures: Harris noted in her most recent disclosure that she received US$1655.92 in concert tickets as a gift from the music artist Beyonce in 2023. (The Vice President posted on Instagram thanking the singer last August.)
For decades, Trump made a name for himself as a real estate developer and TV personality. The former President graduated from University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in 1968 and joined his father’s real estate business. Since his presidency, Trump has earned money through book deals, speaking engagements and the company that owns his social media network, Truth Social. His net worth is reportedly about US$3.9 billion – more than 99.9% of American households.
Investment and business income: Trump is entitled to a federal pension as a former president, but much of his income comes from his businesses. Using broad ranges, Trump reported at least US$635m in income from real estate, hotels, resorts and golf properties during 2023, according to an analysis by The Post. Much of his net worth is now due to his stake in Truth Social’s parent company, Trump Media & Technology Group. The company went public in March and reported a US$16.4m quarterly loss last month.
Real estate: The Trump Organisation’s portfolio lists properties around the world, including at least four commercial properties in New York and California along with at least nine hotels in North America, Europe and Asia. In financial disclosure forms filed this year, Trump reported some details of his income from properties, including US$161m from the golf course at his Doral resort in Florida. In forms filed in 2023, he reported income of US$284m from the 2022 sale of the Trump International Hotel in Washington.
Royalties: The former president reported on his latest disclosure that he earned about US$300,000 in royalties from The Greenwood Bible, a version of the Bible he encouraged supporters to buy that includes lyrics from Lee Greenwood’s song “God Bless the U.S.A.,” and about US$4.4m from his 2023 book, Letters to Trump, which features letters Americans wrote to him.
Taxes: Trump resisted releasing his tax returns until a Democratic-led House panel published six years of the documents in 2022. The filings showed that he paid little in taxes for many years by reporting major business losses. In other years, he paid as much as US$999,466.
Liabilities: Trump’s latest report lists more than US$50m in liabilities owed to both writer E. Jean Carroll and the New York attorney general. The actual payments might end up costing more than US$500m: a federal court jury ordered Trump in January to pay Carroll over US$83m after she won a civil defamation case against him. And in February, a judge ordered the former president to pay New York at least US$454m for civil business fraud. Trump is appealing the decision.
Vance made a splash with his 2016 memoir about his Appalachian roots and his journey through the military to Ohio State University and Yale Law School. After the success of his book, he had a brief but lucrative career as a venture capitalist before he was elected to the US Senate in 2022. With between US$4m and US$12m in assets, Vance at 40 is far wealthier than most people his age.
Salary: As a senator, Vance will earn US$174,000 in 2024. His wife, Usha Vance, worked at the large law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson until July, when she left her job after her husband was tapped as Trump’s vice-presidential nominee. Though Vance did not disclose his wife’s exact salary, the law firm has said in a job posting that it pays most lawyers a salary between US$215,000 and US$415,000 per year based on experience.
Investment income: Vance still owns assets from the venture capital funds that he ran before becoming a senator. In his 2023 Senate financial disclosure form, he valued those holdings at more than US$600,000. He also said he had hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings accounts, millions of dollars in mutual funds, and between US$100,000 and US$250,000 in cryptocurrency. The total value of the couple’s reported assets is between US$4.1m and US$11.8m dollars, according to a Post analysis. In 2023, their income on investments was somewhere between US$201,801 and US$1.2m.
Real estate: The Vances bought a US$1.6m house in Northern Virginia in 2023. They also own a DC townhouse that they rent to tenants and that is described as being worth between US$500,000 and US$1m. In 2022, they reported collecting between US$15,000 and US$50,000 in rent.
Royalties: As the author of a best-selling book that was adapted into a Hollywood movie, Vance reported earning US$54,734 in royalties on his 2023 Senate financial disclosure. He noted on a campaign finance form filed this summer that HarperCollins paid him an unknown advance in 2017 for a second book that has not been published yet.
Taxes: Vance has not released his tax returns.
After joining the Army National Guard and earning undergraduate and master’s degrees from Chadron State College in Nebraska and Minnesota State University, Mankato, Walz spent his career in education and government. He and his wife, Gwen Walz, also a lifelong educator, have sizable public pensions and retirement accounts but little in the way of other savings or investments. Like about 35% of Americans, the Walzes do not currently own a house.
Salary: As Governor of Minnesota, Walz reported on his 2023 tax return that he earned US$112,493. His wife reported earning US$51,231 as an educator.
Investments and pensions: The Walzes’ tax forms and financial disclosures indicate that they have no taxable investment accounts, such as stocks or mutual funds. They have multiple retirement accounts from their jobs in government and education. According to their most recent tax return, they withdrew US$135,000 from their retirement savings in 2023. The Walzes used the withdrawal to pay college expenses for their daughter, Hope, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Real estate: The family sold their Mankato, Minnesota., house for US$304,000 in 2019 when they moved into the Minnesota Governor’s mansion. Before the move, they had taken out a second mortgage on the house and rented out a room.
Taxes: Walz has made his tax returns public for many years. In 2023, he paid US$54,199 in taxes, more than twice as much as he has owed in other recent years because of the large one-time withdrawal from retirement savings. Walz does not have mortgage interest or property taxes to deduct, so he regularly takes the standard deduction on his tax returns.
Candidate financial data comes from financial disclosure forms filed with the US Office of Government Ethics and tax returns voluntarily made public or published by Congress. Candidates sometimes reported large ranges, as permitted by the forms, rather than specific dollar amounts. The candidates’ net worths are based on recent estimates from Forbes as of July for Harris and Vance, August for Walz, and September 16 for Trump. Data on the distribution of American wealth is from microdata from the 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances, accessed via the University of California, Berkeley’s Survey Documentation and Analysis.
The council has also been served with judicial review proceedings.