Gov. Hochul releases taxes, Mayor Adams does not – for now

Gov. Hochul allowed reporters to view her 2021 tax returns on Friday, while Mayor Adams said he was opting against it.

A review of Hochul’s joint tax filing with her husband William showed that the couple’s taxable income from last year was $825,457. The couple’s total tax bill to the IRS and New York State came to $295,001.

Meanwhile, Adams gave a clipped response when asked if he’d commit to following in the footsteps of his predecessor, former Mayor Bill de Blasio, who made his tax returns public each year while serving as mayor.

“No, I can’t,” Adams said during a virtual press conference Friday morning.

Elected officials aren’t required to make their tax returns public, but many do to lend a sense of transparency to their business dealings and financial situations.

Former President Trump famously resisted sharing his tax returns before, during and after his time in the White House.

Adams noted Friday that he would “comply with whatever rules are in place … to show transparency for those who are in public office.”

“I’m going to comply 100%,” he added.

His refusal to hand over his returns breaks with years of city political tradition, dating back to at least Mayor Ed Koch, who released his. And it’s not the first time Adams has run into controversy when it comes to taxes.

Last year, he refiled his taxes after a Politico story showed he didn’t correctly disclose rental income in previous filings. In a subsequent story published in the City, Adams blamed his accountant, Clarence Harley, who he said was experiencing homelessness at the time of the filings.

Hochul did not make any public comments about her returns Friday, but staffers from her office made them available for reporters to review in Albany and New York City. Staff would not let the press keep copies of the returns, however.

The governor and her husband’s returns show that the couple raked in $60,161 in capital gains last year and donated $72,153 to charity — with much of that charitable giving coming in the form of shares of stock.

Among those contributions, the couple gave shares of Apple stock to the Buffalo History Museum, the Alzheimer’s Association and a Dominican monastery, among others.