Elizabeth Warren Income and Net Worth
As of 2019, Elizabeth Warren has amassed an estimated $12 million dollar fortune[1].
Democratic presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren identifies as a capitalist, which makes sense, given her estimated $12 million fortune.
She and her husband, Bruce Mann, both longtime law professors, hold much of their wealth in retirement accounts. Their TIAA and CREF accounts—available to educators and nonprofit employees—are worth at least $4 million. They also own two homes: a $3 million Victorian in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and an $800,000 condo in Washington, D.C.
. . . . Between 2008 and 2018, Warren and Mann earned over $10 million, according to their tax returns. The filings show that about one third of that income came from Warren’s sole proprietorship, through which she makes money writing, teaching, consulting and investing.
After becoming a senator in 2013, Warren dropped her consulting work, but she made up for the lost money with book deals. She disclosed book advance payments of $3.2 million between 2013 and 2018 from Macmillan Publishing Group. In 2014 alone, she received an advance from publisher Henry Holt & Co. (now owned by Macmillan) for $1.2 million.
According to the federal income tax returns* uploaded to her Elizabeth Warren for Senate website [2], Elizabeth Warren’s total income per year:
2008: $ 831,021.00
2009: 980,670.00
2010: 954,721.00
2011: 616,181.00
2012: 424,993.00
2013: 1,070,909.00
2014: 1,607,114.00
2015: 1,173,829.00
2016: 762,785.00
2017: 972,654.00
2018: 905,742.00
*Massachusetts income tax returns are not provided
In 2008, the earliest year for which Warren has released income tax returns, Warren and her husband Bruce Mann had a combined income of $831,021,[3] which increased in 2009 to $981,000. Warren was paid an average of $350,000 per year by Harvard Law School during 2009-2010.[4]
Warren’s net worth as of the end of 2011 was as high as $14.5 million.[5]
In 2010-2011, Warren earned approximately $140,000[6] from Aspen Publishers for her books about bankruptcy. Warren also has published a variety of commercial books over the years, for which no income data is available, such as the 2004 publication of The Two Income Trap[7] which incorporated her bankruptcy research and many of her non-commercial articles.
Warren also worked as a private consultant for which she earned $90,000 on bank antitrust litigation, although it’s not known if she incorporated her bankruptcy docket work because she will not release her report.[8]
During 2008-2010, Warren was paid $212,000 for legal work on behalf of Travelers Insurance Co. in connection with asbestos liability litigation.[9]
Stephen Helfer, a former library assistant at Harvard Law School, in a letter to the Cambridge Wicked Local, asserted that Warren failed to support library staff who faced layoffs in 2009[10]:
Cambridge —Senator-elect Elizabeth Warren says she is a “fighter” for moderate-income Americans (“Warren wins U.S. Senate seat,” CambridgeChronicle, Nov. 8). When given the opportunity to stand up for low-income employees at Harvard three years ago, however, where she has been a tenured professor for almost 20 years, Warren did nothing of the sort.
In 2009, at the depth of the recession, Harvard’s endowment, because of its high-risk investing, decreased 30 percent. The university proclaimed it needed to cut costs and warned low-paid staff of layoffs. Many on campus asked the administration to follow the example of institutions like Beth Israel hospital and request faculty and other high earners to take pay reductions as a means to save jobs.
Several employees at Harvard Law School circulated a petition asking all law school members, who could, to make such a sacrifice. Warren and her husband (also a Harvard Law professor) have combined yearly incomes in the $1 million range and she earned another $200,000 for work she called “part-time” in Washington. During this uneasy period when across campus staff feared for their livelihoods, Warren remained silent.
Harvard president Drew Faust — whose own salary is close to $1 million — and university administrators ignored requests for pay reductions. Ultimately 275 lower-income employees lost their jobs and many more were persuaded to retire. Harvard professors, ever fond of inveighing against “corporate greed” and voicing slogans like “shared sacrifice,” suffered no inconvenience.
Warren now vows to go to Washington to fight for the middle class. But, like so many academics, she is more adept at feathering her own nest than truly helping Americans in need.
–Stephen Helfer, Crawford Street
Helfer served as a library assistant at Harvard Law School for 22 years and retired in 2009.
In February 2013, The Washington Post reported that Warren purchased a $740,000 condo in Washington, D.C.[11]:
The new senator from Massachusetts has put down roots in downtown Washington — and her posh Penn Quarter condo is within walking distance of hot restaurants, popular museums and even her new office. Two bedrooms, two baths and just over 1,400 square feet. She closed on the property last month and quickly started enjoying the neighborhood, including a dinner at nearby Hill Country Barbecue.
In October, 2018, the Boston Herald noted that Warren was keeping her personal income tax down by deducting things like clothes donations and that this does not comport with her “pro-tax stance” [12]:
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and her husband have written off hundreds of thousands of dollars in charitable deductions in recent years — decreasing their tax burden by thousands just by claiming donated clothes, tax records show.
. . . . Warren and her husband, Bruce Mann, last year made $913,442, and put in for $81,858 in charitable deductions, according to tax returns on her campaign website.
In the five years before that, the couple wrote off a total of $190,734 in charitable deductions, records show.
And they claimed donations for clothes. The pair wrote off $2,545 in 2014, returns show, after they gave what they reported as clothing originally purchased for $50,000 to Big Brothers Big Sisters and Dress for Success.
But Warren’s campaign corrected that value downward yesterday after the Herald called about the deduction. A spokeswoman said the couple made a mistake on the 2014 tax returns, saying the actual original value of donated clothing that year was about $8,000. But she insisted that error didn’t affect the amount the couple ended up paying.
“The original values of donated clothing and household items listed on Senator Warren’s 2014 tax return (column g) were entry errors that did not affect the ultimate amount that she owed to the IRS because the deductions taken (column h) were correct,” Warren spokeswoman Kristen Ortman told the Herald. “The accurate original value was closer to the original value of similar clothing and household items in Senator Warren’s 2012 taxes (around $8,000).”
In 2012, the couple wrote off $2,841 for “thrift shop” donations.
Elizabeth Warren Tax Returns by masslive on Scribd
References
- ^ Michela Tindera, How Elizabeth Warren Built A $12 Million Fortune, Forbes, Aug. 20, 2019
- ^ Elizabeth Warren for Senate, Tax Returns, Elizabeth Warren for Senate
- ^ Rachel Weiner, Scott Brown, Elizabeth Warren release tax returns, The Washington Post, Apr. 27, 2012
- ^ Glen Johnson and John R. Ellement, Scott Brown, Elizabeth Warren release tax returns, The Boston Globe, April 27, 2012
- ^ BuzzFeed Staff, Elizabeth Warren Suggests She's Not In The 1%, BuzzFeed, Jan. 27, 2012
- ^ Archive.org, Elizabeth Warren Senate Campaign Disclosure, Archive, Oct. 4, 2012
- ^ Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi, The Two Income Trap, Google Books, 2003
- ^ Robert Schmidt, Warren Worked on Bank Suit While Head of TARP Panel, Bloomberg, Sep. 28, 2010
- ^ Noah Bierman, Elizabeth Warren was key in asbestos case, The Boston Globe, May 1, 2012
- ^ Stephen Helfer, LETTER: Warren didn't stand up for low-income Harvard employees, Wicked Local Cambridge via Legal Insurrection, Nov. 26, 2012
- ^ The Reliable Source, Surreal Estate: Sen. Elizabeth Warren buys Penn Quarter condo, The Washington Post, Feb. 26, 2013
- ^ Sean Philip Cotter , Elizabeth Warren's deductions a bad fit with pro-tax stance, The Boston Herald, October 3, 2018