Brady Plays Peek-A-Boo With Tax Return

By Marcus Gilmer in News on Apr 23, 2010 6:20PM

President Obama did it. So did Gov. Quinn, who then called out his gubernatorial opponent, GOP nominee Bill Brady to do the same. Show us your tax returns. And Brady is giving reporters what they want. Sort of. He'll make his returns available for review to reporters but only for a few hours and they have to come to his campaign office to see them. Per the Tribune:

"They will show that my family business is struggling in an economy that has been a burden on all businesses in Illinois. It has not been good," said Brady, a state senator from Bloomington whose downstate construction business made him wealthy during the boom years of the 1990s.

Should we even care about such things, usually reserved as an election year tactic? Some think so. Joseph J. Thorndike of the Tax History Project says, "Voters should care about a candidate's tax returns because they provide a valuable window on his or her integrity." That's a fair point but given the history of political corruption, especially in our state, we get the concern. But it's still pretty easy to get by with plenty of skeletons in your closet and an apparently clean 1040. When was the last time you were in a voting booth and thought, "Ah, you know, candidate A had way fewer deductions on his tax return than candidate B, I'm totally changing my vote." We'll take it for what it is: typical political posturing that will very likely have no effect whatsoever on the outcome of the race. Well, unless someone is dumb enough to list those stolen goods and bribes on their form.