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Middle-Class Joe just posted two years of numbers no member of the middle class has ever seen.
Joe Biden spent decades branding himself as the guy who joked about being the poorest man in the U.S. Senate. Then he left the vice presidency, signed a book deal, hit the paid-speech circuit, and the bank account changed shape fast. The 2020 candidate’s newly released tax returns and financial disclosures show exactly how it happened — and exactly how much.
- Biden earned $396,456 in his final year as vice president in 2016; he and Jill Biden then grossed $11.1 million in 2017 and nearly $4.6 million in 2018.
- An estimated $8 million, multi-book contract with Flatiron Books produced Biden’s memoir Promise Me, Dad and Jill Biden’s Where the Light Enters.
- Between January 2018 and May 2019, Biden collected roughly $4.29 million on the paid-speech circuit, including $190,000 for a single appearance at Drew University and $180,000 at Vanderbilt University.
The Numbers Behind the Windfall
The filings, covering 2016 through 2018, tell a straightforward story of a former vice president cashing in on his name the moment he was free to do it. In 2016, still in office, the Bidens’ income sat under $400,000. A year later, out of the White House, it exploded to $11.1 million, before settling to $4.6 million in 2018 — still more than 11 times his old VP salary. Combined, the two post-office years brought in over $15.6 million.
Most of that money ran through two S-corporations the Bidens set up to handle the new business, CelticCapri Corp and Giacoppa Corp, which collected the book royalties and speaking fees rather than the money landing as simple wage income.
The Book Deal and the Speaking Circuit
The single biggest driver was publishing. The roughly $8 million Flatiron Books contract covered Biden’s bestselling memoir Promise Me, Dad, written about the final years of his son Beau’s life, along with Jill Biden’s own book, Where the Light Enters. Between the two titles, the advance alone dwarfed anything Biden had earned in 36 years in the Senate.
The Bidens grossed $11.1 million in 2017 alone — a figure roughly 28 times what Biden made as vice president just a year earlier.
Then there was the speaking circuit. From January 2018 through May 2019, Biden delivered dozens of paid speeches, frequently commanding $100,000 to $200,000 a stop — $190,000 at Drew University, $180,000 at Vanderbilt University — for a total haul near $4.29 million. It’s the same fee structure other former officials in both parties have leaned on after leaving Washington, and it’s a big reason Biden’s finances look nothing like they did during his Senate years.
Teaching Gigs and a Beach House
The windfall wasn’t limited to books and lecture fees. Biden picked up roughly $775,000 as the Benjamin Franklin Presidential Practice Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, while Jill Biden drew a salary teaching English at Northern Virginia Community College. Together, the academic posts added a steady stream of income on top of the speaking and publishing money.
With the debt paid down, the Bidens bought a $2.7 million vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, in 2017, while renting a mansion in McLean, Virginia — a very different housing picture than the one Biden used to describe on the trail.
Tax Transparency as a Campaign Contrast
Biden’s campaign leaned into the release rather than burying it, framing the disclosure as proof of transparency at a moment when Team Biden has been rolling out its broader policy pitch to Democratic primary voters. The campaign pointed out that Biden has now made 21 cumulative years of tax returns public over his career, a direct jab at President Donald Trump’s continued refusal to release his own returns.
It’s a contrast Biden has been happy to draw as he tries to hold his frontrunner status through a crowded primary field, even as Barack Obama has been urging Democrats not to get complacent heading into 2020. Whether “Middle-Class Joe” still fits as a nickname is a fair question — but the paper trail on how he got rich isn’t in dispute anymore, it’s public record.
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