May 14, 2004

Only suckers pay taxes and clearly the well endowed Mrs. John Kerry is no sucker. Quotable: " 'WE don't pay taxes," Leona Helmsley famously said in 1989. "Only the little people pay taxes." Leona Helmsley, meet Teresa Heinz Kerry, second wife of the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, Sen. John Forbes Kerry of Massachusetts .. The widow of the late Sen. John Heinz, Teresa is worth $550 million, owns at least five mansions and controls a corporation that owns a Gulfstream V private jet worth $35 million. The widow Heinz, who is five years older than her second husband, does pay taxes, but only up to a point. Last year, according to the "summary," she paid income taxes of about $750,000 on an income of $5.1 million. That works out to less than 15 percent of her income, because over half of her income - $2.8 million - came from tax-exempt interest on government bonds. In other words, in addition to the $45,000 a week on which she did pay taxes, Mrs. John Kerry last year collected another $56,000 a week upon which she paid zero taxes .. ". Posted by Greg Ransom | TrackBack