California Gov. Gavin Newsom released more than 700 pages of long-withheld tax returns on Friday, revealing nearly $200,000 in household staff wages, a $45,000 Armani clothing donation, and millions in earnings, all while he and his wife remain subjects of a federal investigation.
Newsom's office allowed select reporters to view the filings covering tax years 2022 through 2024 but barred them from making copies. The returns show the governor and First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom earned between $1.7 million and $2 million annually during that period, with Newsom's roughly $200,000 gubernatorial salary accounting for only a fraction of the family's total income. Most of the money flowed from winery, restaurant, and hospitality businesses Newsom placed into a blind trust after taking office.
The filings do not identify which individual businesses generated profits or losses. Over the four-year span, the couple paid nearly $2.8 million in federal income taxes and about $500,000 in California income taxes, the Associated Press reported.
Spokesperson Diana Crofts-Pelayo waved the returns off before anyone could read them:
"They're unremarkable and entirely consistent with what Californians already know from his annual Form 700 disclosures."
Unremarkable is one word for it. But the returns arrived only after weeks of pointed questions about why a governor who signed a 2019 law requiring gubernatorial candidates to disclose five years of federal income tax returns, and who pledged to release his own annually, had gone silent on the subject after tax year 2020.
Among the more striking line items: in 2022, the Newsoms donated Armani business attire originally purchased for approximately $45,000 to an unnamed Oakland restorative justice nonprofit. On their tax filing, the couple listed the estimated thrift-store value of the designer clothing at $4,900. The gap between what the clothes cost and what the Newsoms claimed they were worth, roughly a 90 percent markdown, is the kind of creative accounting that tends to draw attention from auditors and voters alike.
The returns also revealed that the couple paid nearly $200,000 in wages to household employees in 2024 alone, on top of employment taxes for domestic workers and babysitters. Childcare spending for three of their four children ranged between $14,000 and $44,000 per year across the filing period.
Newsom collected $70,000 in author income in 2023 and $75,000 in 2024. The New York Times reported it was unclear whether the income came from Newsom's memoir or other publishing projects.
Jennifer Siebel Newsom's production company, Girls Club Entertainment, lost about $37,000 in 2022. She reported earning just $11,700 from the business that year. The returns show the company lost money in most years covered by the filings, a pattern that raises obvious questions about the venture's purpose and viability.
Siebel Newsom also collected $150,000 from The Representation Project, her nonprofit organization that promotes Girls Club Entertainment films and other initiatives. The returns did not specify which year that payment covered. The Washington Free Beacon reported that Siebel Newsom has received over $1.5 million since 2020 from the charity, which is funded by corporations doing business with the Newsom administration in California.
The Newsoms donated between $40,000 and $67,000 to charity each year during the four-year period. That generosity, including the Armani write-off, amounted to a modest share of the family's annual income.
Newsom made financial transparency a centerpiece of his political brand. In 2017, he pledged to release his tax returns every year he served in office, calling it a "moral duty." During his 2018 gubernatorial campaign, he released multiple years of returns dating back to 2011. He signed the 2019 disclosure law. And then, after releasing his 2020 returns during his 2022 reelection campaign, he stopped.
No returns for 2021. None for 2022. None for 2023. The silence stretched for years, until the federal investigation made it untenable. Newsom confirmed last month that he and Siebel Newsom are subjects of a federal probe, a disclosure that intensified pressure on the governor to open his books.
Crofts-Pelayo framed the Friday release as voluntary generosity:
"The governor publicly released his tax returns while he was on the ballot and is happy to go above and beyond by releasing the remaining years as well."
Going "above and beyond" by doing what you promised to do every year, years late, under federal scrutiny, is a generous description of the situation.
When The California Post asked Newsom earlier this month about the missing returns, the governor appeared surprised they had not already been released. "I know you love taxes," he told the reporter. "And you will have all those new tax returns, because, I have no reason why you haven't gotten them already." His office had told The Post that "the remaining returns will be shared this month."
The tax returns landed against a backdrop that makes "unremarkable" a hard sell. Dana Williamson, Newsom's former chief of staff, pleaded guilty in May to conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud, filing a false tax return, and lying to the FBI. Williamson is scheduled to be sentenced September 17.
One federal inquiry is examining Jennifer Siebel Newsom's taxes specifically, a detail The California Post previously reported. Newsom has accused the Trump administration of weaponizing the Justice Department against him, calling the probes politically motivated. The governor hired a high-profile defense attorney as the investigations expanded.
Caitlin Sutherland of Americans for Public Trust put it plainly: Newsom "made a show of promising to disclose his tax returns in order to criticize the president" but "failed to turn over any returns for years, coinciding with growing scrutiny about Jennifer Siebel Newsom's ties to her charities and accusations of self-enrichment."
The couple did not release returns for tax year 2025, citing an extension. Newsom's office said they expect to complete those filings in October.
That leaves months of additional waiting, and an open federal investigation, before the public gets a full picture of the Newsom family's finances. The returns released Friday offer numbers, but not answers. More than 700 pages of filings, and the most important questions remain the ones the documents cannot address: what the federal investigators are looking at, and why the governor who built his brand on transparency spent years avoiding it.
A man who lectures the country about accountability ought to practice it without a subpoena hanging over his head.
