TV commentator and author Arianna Huffington, who launched her campaign for governor with criticism of "fat cats" who fail to shoulder a fair share of taxes, paid no individual state income tax and just $771 in federal taxes during the last two years, her tax returns show.
Huffington, who released her tax returns for the last two years to The Times, lives in an 8,000-square-foot home in Brentwood above Sunset Boulevard that is valued at about $7 million. She socializes with many wealthy and prominent people.
But the returns show that at least for the last two years, her income was far outweighed by losses that she reported were incurred by Christabella Inc., the private corporation she owns and uses to manage her writing and lecturing business.
In announcing her candidacy last week, Huffington blamed California's fiscal crisis, in part, on the corrupting influence of special interest groups that have helped "corporate fat cats get away with not paying their fair share of taxes."
Failing to close corporate tax loopholes, she argued, would "be a slap in the face of all the hard-working taxpayers being forced to dig deeper and deeper in their pockets so the well-connected can pad their bottom line."
In an interview Wednesday, Huffington said there was no inconsistency between her campaign message and income tax record. She characterized her deductions as "very conservative" and said that any comparison between her and those whom she has criticized would be unfair.
"There isn't any loophole here. There isn't any dodging here," she said. "This is basically putting your income against your expenses."
Nonetheless, tax experts said Wednesday that Huffington's tax profile is not one that the typical working family in California can duplicate.
"The average guy isn't able to wipe out the taxes on his wage income because he doesn't have millions of dollars in losses" from a private corporation, said Phil Holthouse, a partner in a Los Angeles certified public accounting firm.
An author of nine books with a 10th on the way, Huffington, 53, said her tax returns provide only a partial view of her finances over the last two years. Her expenses were high and income low during the last two years because of the cyclical nature of the publishing business, she said.
"I'm not the rich candidate that popular perception might have presumed just because I was married to a wealthy man," Huffington said, referring to her ex-husband, Michael Huffington, a former Republican congressman who is a multimillionaire.
