The Rubios’ returns indicate they’ve incurred all three types of penalties over the past decade, including one for not filing by April 15. Their return for 2008 includes a note that says: “LATE FILING PENALTY NOT INCLUDED: $170.” That amount suggests the return was no more than a month late. In all, the Rubios’ penalties and interest amounted to $380 in 2008, a year in which they reported more than $399,000 in adjusted gross income and owed federal taxes of more than $3,700 when they filed.
Personal Finances
For Rubio, who has been dogged by questions about his personal finances, the tax penalties may reinforce a narrative his chief nemesis, Trump, has sought to exploit. The billionaire real estate mogul this week began airing television ads saying, among other things, that Rubio used a credit card owned by the Republican Party of Florida for personal expenses, such as to “pave his driveway.” Rubio has said he mistakenly used the card on some occasions for personal items; he eventually paid for those expenses himself.
News accounts have shown that Rubio accidentally mingled personal funds and campaign funds as a Florida state lawmaker; in 2010, a bank sought to foreclose on a home he purchased in Tallahassee with another state lawmaker after the pair stopped making payments; and in 2014, he withdrew $68,000 from a retirement fund. Such cash-outs before the age of 59 1/2 incur heavy tax penalties. (He made a similar early withdrawal in 2001, for about $3,800, according to that year’s return.)
Asked about those incidents during a Republican debate last October, Rubio called them “discredited attacks from Democrats and my political opponents.” But Politifact Florida, a fact-checking website produced by Florida newspapers, determined that “all of these events happened and have been well-documented.”