ALBANY - Political candidates waging battles over their personal tax returns isn't just for presidential races.
It's a rite of passage for gubernatorial candidates in New York, too. And this year is no different.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his major opponents — Republican Marc Molinaro and Democrat Cynthia Nixon — are sparring over their income-tax returns and what they revealed.
Cuomo's campaign has needled his foes, calling on them to release 10 years of returns, while Molinaro has seized on the Democratic governor's property-tax situation. Nixon, meanwhile, hadn't released her returns as of Thursday, but said she will this week.
So what have the tax returns showed? Here's a refresher.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo
There's a long history of statewide political candidates releasing their tax returns in New York.
Cuomo has made his returns available each year to reporters in Albany since running for attorney general in 2006, when he released the previous 14 years of returns.
The governor's 2017 return showed he had a federal adjusted gross income of $212,776, which was largely from $173,046 in wages as governor and $36,486 in dividends from his investments in a blind trust managed by AMG National Trust Bank.
He paid $41,765 in federal taxes. He paid $12,782 in state income taxes and donated $11,000 to charity, which went entirely to HELP USA, the housing charity Cuomo founded in 1986.
Cuomo's tax returns from previous years showed his low-selling 2014 memoir netted him about $783,000 from HarperCollins, his publisher.
That worked out to about $245 for each of the 3,200 copies sold of the book, All Things Possible: Setbacks and Successes in Politics and Life.
Cuomo's campaign has touted his history of releasing his returns as a symbol of transparency, faulting Molinaro and Nixon's campaign for not releasing 10 years of returns.
Molinaro, meanwhile, has also tried to seize on Cuomo's return, noting that it does not list any paid property taxes.
Cuomo has long maintained he splits all household expenses, including property taxes, with his longtime partner Sandra Lee, the Food Network star who owns the Westchester County home they share.
Lee and Cuomo are not married and file separately, so Lee's income-tax information is not on Cuomo's return.
Marc Molinaro
Molinaro, the Dutchess County executive and likely Republican gubernatorial nominee, released his 2017 tax return on Thursday.
He released a single year's return, though it included a chart summarizing the past five years of he and his wife's income and taxes paid.
Molinaro and his wife, Corinne Adams, had a combined adjusted gross income of $174,048 in 2017, which was largely from Molinaro's $139,869 salary as county executive.
They paid $22,539 in federal taxes and $9,231 in state taxes.
Adams received about $27,000 for her job as communications director for Tinkelman Brothers Development Corporation, a Poughkeepsie-area company led by Steven Tinkelman, who has contributed about $2,300 to Molinaro's political campaigns over the years.
Molinaro's return shows he owns a rental property on Prince Street in Poughkeepsie, collecting $27,000 in rent in 2017.
That came just short of covering the $27,835 in mortgage interest and taxes he paid on the property through the year, with Molinaro listing another $7,382 in depreciation costs.
He also drew down about $7,000 from a retirement account last year.That was to help pay for a new house in Red Hook, Dutchess County, according to Molinaro's campaign.
Molinaro listed one charitable contribution in 2017: $1,000 worth of furniture, clothing and household items donated to the Young Mission Outreach in Poughkeepsie.
Cynthia Nixon
As of Thursday, Nixon had not released any income-tax returns — but she says she will very soon.
On Tax Day, Nixon spokeswoman Sarah Ford said Nixon and her wife, Christine Marinoni, had filed for an extension.
Nixon, the Sex and the City star and an education activist, is challenging Cuomo in a Democratic primary and has locked up the Working Families Party nomination.
"Cynthia and Christine filed a routine extension a couple of weeks ago for their personal income taxes, while they wait on missing information from third parties," Ford said April 17. "To answer Andrew Cuomo's latest charge, yes, they will absolutely release them in the coming weeks."
Nixon told reporters Thursday in New York City that she would be releasing her returns this week.
