Gov. McKee releases state and federal tax returns. Will opponent Kalus do the same?

PROVIDENCE — Gov. Dan McKee on Tuesday voluntarily made public his state and federal tax returns, and he called on his Republican challenger Ashley Kalus to do the same.

In April, both sent word they had filed for extensions, but their spokesmen indicated they would make their tax filings public when they were filed.

According to the filings that McKee, 71, made public on Tuesday, he and his wife, Susan, paid $30,068 in federal income taxes, and $8,085 in state income taxes to Rhode Island on their $203,508 adjusted gross income.

Their 2021 income included her $56,511 pension as a retired public school reading teacher, and $41,808 in Social Security benefits.

No law requires any political candidate in Rhode Island to make their tax returns public, but the majority of top office candidates have done so in recent years.

Most of their filings are reflections of salaried government employees who at top echelons in Rhode Island often make less than the career state employees around them.

In some cases, they are revealing, however, like former Gov. Gina Raimondo's disclosures, which detailed income from her blind trust holdings in Point Judith Capital during years when the state was locked into its own investment in her former venture capital company.

When asked why McKee was willing to make his own family's returns public, spokeswoman Andrea Palagi said: "The Governor believes it’s in the public’s interest to release this information."

The McKees' returns reveal little new about their life.

But Kalus is a relatively new arrival to Rhode Island.

On her financial disclosure filings with the state Ethics Commission earlier this year, she indicated that Doctors Test Centers - the entity created by her plastic surgeon husband, that had the state contract for a Covid testing and vaccination site - paid her between $500,001 and $1 million in 2021.

Political Scene: McKee, Kalus duking it out in public and in private over testing contract

The filing did not provide a full picture. It is unclear, for example, to which state Kalus and her husband - Jeffrey Weinzweig - paid their resident tax returns in 2021, whether it was Florida — where Kalus was registered to vote until shortly before declaring her run for governor — or Illinois, where she had a "homestead exemption" on a home.

A Kalus spokesman told The Journal on April 19 that: "Ashley had to file for an extension, but will release her returns upon completion."

With the Oct. 17 tax filing deadline for people who sought extensions now less than a week away, there was no immediate response on Tuesday from the Kalus campaign on when she intends to make good on that pledge.

Previous coverage: Questions swirl amid Ashley Kalus and Gov. Dan McKee's still-unreleased tax returns

Noting that McKee has made his returns public since he last faced voters in 2018, his campaign spokesman Alana O'Hare said recently: "We hope Ashley Kalus will also release at least three years of tax returns as well."

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Gov. McKee releases tax returns, upping pressure on Kalus to do same