They released the tax data on Friday, which showed the couple is now among elite American taxpayers from a modest beginning in 2001, when they left the White House with little money and millions in legal bill.

The bulk of their wealth has come from speaking on seminars and writing books, which account for 92 million dollars, including 15 million in advance from Bill Clinton’s 2004 autobiography My Life.

The former president’s vigorous lecture schedule, where his speeches command upwards of 250,000 dollars per sitting brought in almost 52 million.

During that time, the Clintons paid 33.8 million in federal taxes and claimed deductions for 10.2 million in charitable contributions.

The contributions went to a family foundation run by the Clintons that has given away only about half of the money they put into it, and most of that was last year, after Hillary declared her candidacy.

Hillary’s campaign released the eight years of income tax information in order to follow the lead of her opponent Barack Obama, who had previously disclosed his tax returns for the same period.

But the awkward thing is that the disclosure came on the day when Hillary called for the creation of a cabinet-level post to tackle poverty — and the Clintons are in the top one-hundredth of 1 percent, or roughly 14,500, of all taxpayers in all the US states combined. 

The returns provide the most detailed look at the Clintons’ finances since 2000, when they last made their returns public, and in many ways provide an unusually detailed look at the earning power of a former president.
Never before has the spouse of a former president run for office, forcing disclosure of their finances.

Obama’s spoils
Obama’s and his wife Michelle’s tax returns showed that they earned about 1 million dollars in 2006, much of it from his book deals. Republican McCain’s wife, Cindy, an heiress to a beer distributorship fortune, is believed to be worth tens of millions of dollars, but the exact amount is unclear. Obama’s earlier decision to declare his assest had forced Hillary to persuade her husband to disclose everything.