Jeb Bush
The lesson: Poor tax planning can cost you.
The majority of the former Florida governor’s income comes from earnings via business deals and consulting work. Bush chose to classify that money as “Schedule C” income, which meant he had to pay standard tax rates as high as 35 percent and 39.6 percent. If he had structured his business differently, he could have classified much of those earnings as dividends and paid 15 to 20 percent on it. Some pundits have said that Bush chose to pay higher taxes in order to avoid the problems that Mitt Romney’s campaign ran into in 2012, when filings revealed that the millionaire paid an effective tax rate of less than 14 percent.
