After announcing that his family is under federal investigation, reportedly related to taxes and business income, a spokesperson for California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Friday that the office was “working to prepare” tax returns for tax years 2021 through 2025 “for transparency,” adding that, “unlike Donald Trump, the Governor has nothing to hide.”
Upon his election as governor in 2018 Newsom promised to release his full tax returns each year, but has not held to that promise; in 2021 and 2022 he released tax returns for tax years 2017 through 2020 to comply with California law for gubernatorial candidates, but has not released even an overview since.
PRIOR COVERAGE:
Gavin Newsom Says He’s Under Investigation by DOJ; Sources Say It’s Related to His Wife’s Taxes
Still, Newsom spokesperson Tara Gallegos told the California Post in an email:
“The Governor and First Partner publicly disclose their income annually. They have released every tax return that had been filed while he was a candidate for statewide office, covering 2015 through his 2022 re-election.”
That’s not even semi-accurate. They publicly disclose income ranges every year through Gavin’s required Form 700 filing, but those are huge ranges. They have only released full tax returns for four tax years, 2017 through 2020, and only released those to the Secretary of State’s website during his re-elect campaign in 2022. Even though the election wasn’t until November, they were able to avoid releasing 2021 returns by filing for an extension.
The returns were removed from the site shortly after the election, but RedState archived them; they can be viewed here.
In 2017, when he announced his run for governor, he produced six years of returns for a select group of journalists to review in-person at the offices of his campaign consultants, but they weren’t allowed to copy them. From that review, several outlets posted basic information from the tax returns, including total income, total taxes paid, amounts paid for household employees, and charitable giving.
In 2018 Newsom’s team followed the same procedure, with only basic information being reported to the masses.
Knowing this, when Newsom allowed reporters to view his 2019 tax returns in May 2021, Politico brought blank IRS printouts to the office. They “copied the numbers and other key information by hand, along with detailed notes,” and “then typed the data into each form or schedule on the IRS website to reproduce a portion of Newsom’s returns,” noting, “the governor’s returns were several hundred pages long and complex, leaving journalists with little time to fully scrutinize every page.”
The tax returns are of particular interest in light of the purchase of a $9.1 million mansion in Marin County by an LLC formed by Jennifer Siebel Newsom in November 2024, a week after the organization received the unencumbered deed. Siebel Newsom (through the LLC) took out a $6.5 million mortgage a few months later, in February 2025. Payments for that mortgage, one of two residential mortgages the Newsoms have, total more than $500,000 annually.
Maybe they’re investigating you because your finances don’t add up? Or because your wife’s LLC received the deed to a $9.1 million home a week before the LLC was even created – while you still had your Fair Oaks home? How was that LLC capitalized? pic.twitter.com/SIIN1tinv1
— Jennifer Van Laar (@jenvanlaar) June 15, 2026
However, a review of reporting over the years, combined with our own review of Newsom’s tax returns, reveals an average total income of approximately $1.4 million a year for tax years 2010-2020. In some of those years the couple sold significant assets. As the San Francisco Chronicle reported about the couple’s 2010-2015 tax returns:
“Over the past several years, the couple made several hundred thousand dollars trading silver. In 2011, for example, they made $499,452 trading the metal.”
The big question is, how are the Newsoms affording this lifestyle based on what we know about their income and assets? Although the media make it seem that Newsom’s wealthy enough to afford all of this based on his stake in Plumpjack, those assets are all in a blind trust and the dividends he received from 2010 through 2020 were relatively stable. And, the wine industry (more than 85% of Newsom’s assets are in wine) hasn’t done well since 2020, so it’s difficult to imagine those dividends have substantially increased.
Newsom’s office didn’t give any indication of when those returns would actually be released, or if they’d be original or amended returns.
I discussed the issue with Liz Wheeler of The Blaze earlier this week – catch the interview here.
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