Obama's Tax Return

President Obama has released his tax return, which you can look at for yourself here. Two things popped out for me. First, the return was 48 pages long, which, given that Mr. Obama's affairs aren't particularly complex, is a good argument for tax simplification. Second, Mr. Obama seems to have nearly all his money invested in Treasury Bills or other U.S. government bonds. Maybe he sees that as a way of avoiding a conflict of interest, but he could get around that with a blind trust. He is giving up a lot of potential return that way, given the low interest rates (and one could perhaps argue that there he actually does have a conflict of interest, because changes in the interest rates, which he has some sway over indirectly, would affect the yield and price of the bonds). In any event, in choosing where to put his own money, Mr. Obama seems to have gone with the public sector rather than the private sector. On his Illinois return, he declared $10,623 in "U.S. Treasury bonds, bills, notes, savings bonds, and U.S. agency interest from U.S. 1040A or 1040." All he had in ordinary dividends was $3. Maybe his stocks and corporate bonds are all in his retirement account, and he just keeps the government bonds in his taxable account to minimize taxes. Or maybe all his stocks are long-term holdings of stocks that don't pay dividends. But it strikes me as an unusual profile.