Newsom Reveals Tax Returns In Run-up To 2028

SACRAMENTO, California — Gov. Gavin Newsom disclosed four years of tax returns this week, revealing several steady streams of income for him and his wife that brought in well over $1 million each year and peaked at $3.5 million in 2021, when the couple sold a Marin County mansion.

The filings were the first Newsom made available since 2022 and come after he fell years behind on a pledge to release his tax returns each year. Following the windfall from the house sale, they show Newsom and his spouse, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, earned between $1.4 and $1.6 million each year from 2022 through 2024. They paid an effective federal income tax rate of 30 to 35 percent from 2021 to 2024, averaging more than $710,000 annually. The pair drew income from Newsom’s government salary, capital gains generated by the sale of investments, a blind trust that holds his wine and hospitality businesses and Siebel Newsom’s film production company, her own trust and her nonprofit, the Representation Project.

Newsom pilloried President Donald Trump years ago for refusing to make his returns public and vowed after he was first elected governor to disclose his own. In Newsom’s first term, his campaign made his tax returns available. And during his 2022 reelection bid, he was required to post five years of returns on the secretary of state’s website under a law he signed requiring gubernatorial candidates to do so.

Although Newsom previously said he would proactively disclose his returns, his spokesperson Izzy Gardon attributed the lapse to the fact that no one had requested to see them until a CalMatters inquiry in 2024. But a viewing of the documents was never arranged because the reporter who made the inquiry left the publication soon after, he said. More recent requests prompted the governor to choose to disclose the records, Gardon said. The governor’s office made the returns available to reporters for viewing but did not post them online or allow photographs or copies.

"Governor Newsom is the first Governor in California history to publicly release tax returns covering every year of his tenure in office,” Gardon said in a statement. “That's on top of placing his assets in a blind trust and signing a day-one executive order barring state agencies from doing business with his businesses. Meanwhile, Donald Trump is openly cashing in on the presidency — cutting business deals from the Oval Office and enriching himself and his family. The contrast is glaring."

The latest release comes as Newsom weighs a presidential bid and as the Trump administration’s Department of Justice appears to be investigating the Newsom family. The probe, a person familiar with it previously said, involves Siebel Newsom’s taxes. The Newsoms have cast it as politically motivated and denied wrongdoing.

The first partner earned a salary of around $150,000 from the Representation Project, founded to challenge gender stereotypes through film and advocacy campaigns. She was not paid by the California Partners Project, another of her nonprofits that has reported receiving some $5 million in donations solicited by the governor through a process known as behesting.

Siebel Newsom also received $100,000 in 2021 from Girls Club Entertainment, her film LLC, but dropped her pay to $11,700 in 2022 and then eliminated it entirely in 2023 and 2024.

The governor took in more than $21,000 from his writing between 2021 and 2022, which according to a spokesperson was from the children’s book he wrote based on his struggles with dyslexia. His author pay jumped to $70,000 in 2023 and $75,000 in 2024 as he worked with writer and veteran California journalist Mark Arax on his recent memoir. A spokesperson did not say by publication time whether the increase was due to an advance from the book.

The family netted around $1 million from the home they sold in 2021 for $5.9 million in Marin County, which borders San Francisco to the north. They lived with their four children in a Sacramento suburb during the governor’s first term, but later moved their family back to Marin and reportedly purchased a different home there for $9 million in 2024.

The Newsoms paid close to $1.3 million in federal taxes and $184,000 in state income taxes in 2021 owing largely to the windfall from the house sale and other investments. They paid $760,000 in taxes in 2022 as their earnings dropped to $1.6 million. And they paid less than $600,000 in taxes in 2023 and 2024 while making $1.4 million each year.

The filings show the couple spent around $190,000 annually on household staff, which a spokesperson said is for child care.