Despite pledging to be the first California governor to release his tax returns every year while in office, Gov. Gavin Newsom has yet to make any filings public during his second term.
Newsom last disclosed a tax return in March 2022, as he was running for reelection. Under state law, signed by Newsom himself, that requires gubernatorial candidates to release their five most recent income tax returns, he shared filings through 2020, when he and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, earned nearly $1.5 million and paid about $480,000 in taxes.
Newsom’s finances have come under increased scrutiny since The Standard broke the news Friday that the governor and his wife recently paid around $9 million for a home in the posh Marin County town of Kentfield. The Newsoms revealed over the summer that they planned to move back to the Bay Area from the Sacramento suburbs “to ensure continuity in their children’s education.”
Following publication of The Standard’s story, the governor’s office clarified that Siebel Newsom purchased the home through an LLC, and no “entities outside of the family” provided financial assistance.
Newsom spokesperson Nathan Click declined to provide CalMatters with any of the governor’s tax returns since the 2020 filing.
Click later told CalMatters the governor’s team would organize an opportunity for reporters to review the documents in a controlled setting, as it has in the past, but did not provide a date or respond to follow-up questions.
In an email Wednesday, Click told The Standard, “We will be releasing the next batch of returns in the coming weeks, in keeping with our typical practice.”
As governor, Newsom receives an annual salary of $234,101. He continues to earn income from a wine and entertainment empire he placed in a blind trust before taking office in 2019. In their 2019 tax return, disclosed in 2021, the Newsoms revealed that they had not sold their previous home in Kentfield — which was initially on the market for nearly $6 million — and were renting it out for $20,000 per month.
Newsom began releasing his tax returns in 2017 as he ran for his first term as governor. This resumed a tradition that had been abandoned by his predecessor, Gov. Jerry Brown, who resisted disclosing his returns, and was seen as a dig at then-President Donald Trump, whose refusal to make his tax filings public was an enormous political controversy at the time. Trump’s tax returns were later released after being obtained by the Democratic-run House Ways and Means Committee.
Two years later, Newsom signed a bill — previously vetoed by Brown — to keep presidential candidates off the California primary ballot unless they release their tax returns. The California Supreme Court struck down the law as unconstitutional, though it did maintain a secondary provision that extends the same requirement to gubernatorial candidates in the state.