Teresa Heinz Kerry's Tax Bill Lighter Than Bush's

Sen. John Kerry and his ketchup heiress wife, Teresa Heinz, paid a meager 15.2 percent of their gross income to the IRS last year, new data released Tuesday by the Kerry campaign shows.

The figure is around half the amount of income tax paid by President Bush and his wife, Laura, as a proportion of their household income.

The Bushes paid $227,000 in federal taxes on a gross 2003 income of $822,126. Their IRS bill amounted to 28 percent of their household income.

But Heinz Kerry, who, as one of the richest women in the U.S. files separately from her husband, paid just half that amount as a percentage of her income, forking over to the IRS $587,000 on a whopping $5 million-plus 2003 gross income.

An estimated tax payment on a filing due in October brought her total 2003 IRS bill up to $750,000, her campaign claimed. But even with additional payment, Heinz Kerry's federal tax tab amounted to just 14.6 percent of her gross income.

Added to her husband's $90,575 IRS payment on a gross 2003 income of $395,338, the Heinz Kerrys' total federal tax bill came to $840,500 - or just 15.2 percent of their $5,510,000 household income.

The would-be first lady's tax bill was so low because she sheltered more than half her income - $2,777,000 - in tax-exempt bonds.

The Bushes reportedly had no tax-exempt income for 2003.

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