{"id":60341,"date":"2018-09-12T11:53:45","date_gmt":"2018-09-12T17:53:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/jared-polis-fires-back-at-gop-attack-over-income-taxes\/"},"modified":"2018-09-12T17:53:45","modified_gmt":"2018-09-12T17:53:45","slug":"jared-polis-fires-back-at-gop-attack-over-income-taxes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/jared-polis-fires-back-at-gop-attack-over-income-taxes\/","title":{"rendered":"Jared Polis fires back at GOP attack over income taxes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"U.S.
U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, Colorado\u2019s Democratic nominee for governor, talks with reporter after touring an apprenticeship training facility at the Pipefitters Local 208 union hall on Tuesday in Denver.<\/span>Ernest Luning\/Colorado Politics<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

U.S. Rep. Jared Polis said Tuesday he will be glad to discuss releasing more of his tax returns once Walker Stapleton, his Republican opponent in the Colorado gubernatorial race, matches the seven years of tax records that Polis released a decade ago when he first ran for Congress.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, his campaign is firing back at a political attack ad that it claims makes false accusations about his income tax payments.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve released seven years of taxes, and we\u2019re waiting for Walker Stapleton to release any of his taxes,\u201d Polis told reporters after touring a union training facility in Denver. \u201cI hope he releases his \u2013 and his trust taxes \u2013 and, of course, after he releases some, we\u2019ll be happy to talk about releasing more. But before I ran for office, I was proud to release seven years of taxes.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter Walker Stapleton releases seven years (of his tax returns), I\u2019m happy to talk about releasing more.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the 2014 gubernatorial campaign, both major-party candidates \u2013 Democrat John Hickenlooper and Republican Bob Beauprez \u2013 released several years of tax records.<\/p>\n

A spokesman for the Stapleton campaign would not say Tuesday night whether the candidate plans to release any of his tax returns, but Stapleton previously characterized calls to release the documents as \u201cstupid and dumb,\u201d adding that the only people who want to see them are \u201cpolitical enemies trying to savage somebody for something.\u201d<\/p>\n

Said Jerrod Dobkin, Stapleton\u2019s communications director: \u201cWhen Jared Polis was first elected, his net worth was $160 million. And after serving a decade in Congress, his net worth is now estimated to be $312 million. It\u2019s up to Jared Polis and Jared Polis alone to explain why he didn\u2019t pay taxes for years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dobkin was referring to decade-old reports that from 2001 to 2005, before entering Congress, Polis didn\u2019t pay income taxes because he didn\u2019t owe any, having sustained business losses, as is common among entrepreneurs who profit largely from selling companies.<\/p>\n

The attack involving Polis\u2019 taxes first surfaced in 2008 when Polis was locked in a close primary for the Boulder-based congressional seat. Polis at the time explained the tax matter, noting: \u201cIn my business career, I only make significant money when I sell a company.\u201d<\/p>\n

Polis, serving his fifth term representing the 2nd Congressional District, and Stapleton, elected eight years ago as state treasurer, have been filing financial disclosure forms for years, but neither he nor Stapleton has made his tax returns available in recent years.<\/p>\n

Both are wealthy businessmen and have poured big bucks into their gubernatorial campaigns \u2013 more than $18 million so far for Polis and around $1 million for Stapleton.<\/p>\n

The candidates\u2019 tax records have been in the spotlight since late last week when the Republican Governors Association began airing an ad that claimed Polis, who made a fortune launching companies during the dot-com boom, \u201cdidn\u2019t pay income taxes, but he wants to raise yours.\u201d<\/p>\n

Polis fired back the next day with an ad rejecting the attack \u2013 and turned his fire on Stapleton. The Polis campaign also asked TV stations to stop airing the ad, which his attorney termed \u201cintentionally false and misleading\u201d because it falsely suggests that Polis improperly evaded paying taxes.<\/p>\n

But an RGA spokesman told Colorado Politics the organization stands by its ad.<\/p>\n

\u201cJared Polis doesn\u2019t want to pay his fair share in taxes, but wants to force Colorado families to shoulder a higher tax burden,\u201d the RGA\u2019s Jon Thompson said in a statement. \u201cJared Polis was caught not paying federal income taxes for five years, was caught using onshore and offshore Cayman Island accounts to avoid paying taxes, and was caught stating that all of it was \u2018completely appropriate.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The Polis campaign disputes each of the ad\u2019s contentions.<\/p>\n

One of the richest members of Congress \u2013 the Center for Responsive Politics ranked him as second richest in the House, with an estimated 2015 net worth exceeding $300 million \u2013 Polis paid more than $18.4 million in income taxes during the seven years before he was elected, according to returns he made available a decade ago.<\/p>\n

When he sold the parent company of ProFlowers.com, an e-commerce floral delivery business he founded, in 2006 Polis netted $116 million and wound up paying more than $13 million in taxes for the year, according to the Daily Camera<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But Polis reported a net loss in income for the four years leading up to that, when he said he was nurturing businesses he\u2019d started \u2013 so didn\u2019t owe any federal income taxes in those years.<\/p>\n

As for any \u201coffshore accounts to avoid paying taxes,\u201d a Polis campaign spokeswoman pointed to reporting from 2008, when Polis acknowledged holdings in a company that also maintained a fund in the Cayman Islands for international investors, but said he never had any money in the Cayman fund.<\/p>\n

The RGA ad ends with a video clip of Polis saying, \u201cI think that\u2019s completely appropriate.\u201d But it omits what he was talking about in a May 30 primary debate when he was questioned about his taxes.<\/p>\n

Here is the full quote: \u201cWhen you don\u2019t make money, you can\u2019t pay taxes, and since I\u2019ve been in public service, my expenses have been greater than my income, and that\u2019s simply the fact, and I think that\u2019s completely appropriate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Polis was elected to a six-year term on the State Board of Education in 2000.<\/p>\n

Asked by reporters Tuesday whether he has paid federal income taxes every year since he was elected to Congress, Polis deflected.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one has ever accused me of not paying my taxes. I\u2019ve paid every penny I\u2019ve owed in taxes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Pressed whether that included income taxes, Polis repeated, \u201cI\u2019ve paid every penny that I\u2019ve owed in taxes.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Democratic gubernatorial candidate calls on opponent Walkter Stapleton to release tax records<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":60342,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,29,1509],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-60341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter","tag-state-elections"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60341\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60341"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=60341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}