Candidate Statement of Economic Interests: Filing and Deadlines

If you are running for office in the United States, you must file a public financial disclosure — often called a candidate Statement of Economic Interests — before your name goes on the ballot. The candidate Statement of Economic Interests filing requirements cover what you own, what you earn, what you owe, gifts you have received, and outside positions you hold, and they apply the moment you become a candidate, not when you win. Federal candidates file under the Ethics in Government Act; state and local candidates file under parallel state ethics laws. The form, the office that receives it, and the deadline all depend on the seat you are seeking.

Who Has to File

Every candidate for President, Vice President, the U.S. Senate, or the U.S. House of Representatives must file a public financial disclosure.¹ Presidential and vice-presidential candidates use OGE Form 278e and file with the Federal Election Commission. House candidates file with the Clerk of the House through the ethics committee; Senate candidates file with the Secretary of the Senate.²

State and local candidates face their own disclosure rules under state ethics statutes. The form name varies — some states call it a Statement of Economic Interests, others use a different label — but the substance is similar. County candidates typically file with the county elections official; city candidates file with the city clerk; state candidates usually file with the secretary of state or a state ethics commission. The triggering event is normally the same as at the federal level: filing your declaration of candidacy or nomination papers.

What the Report Covers

A financial disclosure is a full inventory of your economic life. Federal thresholds are the clearest reference point, and most state forms follow a similar framework.

Assets and Investment Income

You must list every asset held for investment or income production that was worth more than $1,000 at the end of the reporting period: stocks, bonds, mutual funds, investment real estate, partnership interests. Values go in ranges — for example, $1,001 to $15,000, or $250,001 to $500,000 — not exact figures. You also report any income above $200 that the asset generated during the period, such as dividends, interest, rent, or capital gains.³

Earned Income

Every source of earned income over $200 goes on the report: salary, consulting fees, speaking honoraria, business income. For each source you identify the payer and the type and amount of compensation.³

Outside Positions

Any role as an officer, director, trustee, partner, or consultant of a corporation, nonprofit, labor organization, or educational institution must be disclosed, even if unpaid.⁴

Gifts and Travel Reimbursements

Gifts from any single source that aggregate to more than $250 during the reporting period must be listed with the donor’s identity and a description. Travel reimbursements over the same threshold require dates, itinerary, and purpose.³

Employment Agreements

Any continuing arrangement with a current or former employer must be disclosed: severance, deferred compensation, future employment agreements, ongoing participation in pensions or profit-sharing plans.⁴

Liabilities

Report any personal debt over $10,000 owed to a single creditor at any point during the reporting period: student loans, margin accounts, mortgages on rental or investment property, and loans you co-signed. Credit card balances are reportable only if the balance exceeded $10,000 on the last day of the reporting period. Campaign loans must be disclosed if they accrue interest.⁵

Several common debts are excluded:

Mortgages and home equity loans on your primary residence, as long as you do not rent the property out.
Car, boat, and similar personal-property loans, if the loan does not exceed the purchase price of the item securing it.
Debts owed to a spouse, parent, sibling, or child of you or your spouse.
Amounts owed to the IRS or state and local tax authorities.
Loans secured by the cash value of a life insurance policy.

The primary residence exclusion trips up many first-time filers because mortgages on investment property, including vacation homes you rent out, do not qualify.⁵

Spouse and Dependent Children

Your disclosure is not limited to your own finances. Federal law requires you to include financial information about your spouse and dependent children, because a conflict does not disappear because an asset sits in someone else’s name.

For a spouse’s earned income, you disclose the source if it exceeds $1,000 from any single payer, but you do not have to report the exact amount. Honoraria paid to your spouse over $200 from any source require full disclosure of source, amount, and date. Investment income, property interests, and liabilities belonging to your spouse or dependent children are reported under the same rules that apply to your own holdings.⁶

If you and your spouse are permanently separated or divorcing, you do not have to report the separated spouse’s financial interests. A narrow exclusion also exists for a spouse’s asset that is entirely independent of you — no knowledge, no benefit, no joint tax filing — but it is hard to qualify for in practice.⁶

One notable break for candidates: federal rules do not require you to report gifts, travel reimbursements, or financial transactions of a spouse or dependent child on a candidate report. That exemption ends once you take office.⁶

When and Where to File

Federal candidates must file the first financial disclosure within 30 days of becoming a candidate or by May 15 of that year, whichever is later. A hard backstop overrides both: the report must be on file at least 30 days before any election in which you are a candidate. If you remain a candidate into a following year, you owe another report each May 15.⁷

Where you file depends on the office:

Presidential and vice-presidential candidates: Federal Election Commission (forwarded to the Office of Government Ethics).
House candidates: Clerk of the House through the ethics committee.
Senate candidates: Secretary of the Senate.²
State and local candidates: the county elections official, city clerk, or state ethics commission, depending on the office sought.

State and local deadlines are typically the same as the final filing date for the declaration of candidacy or nomination papers. Filing methods include hand delivery, certified mail, and, in many jurisdictions, an approved electronic filing system that returns an immediate confirmation. If you file on paper, the filing officer will give you a date-stamped copy. Keep it. Without proof of timely filing, your nomination papers can be rejected.

Requesting an Extension

Federal law allows an extension of up to 90 days if you cannot meet the deadline. The request must go to your supervising ethics office before the original deadline passes. No extension can push your filing to within 30 days of an election in which you are a candidate, so an approaching election can shorten the extension you would otherwise be granted.⁸

State extension procedures vary. Some states offer similar grace periods; others have no formal extension mechanism and simply apply penalties for late filings. If you think you will miss a state deadline, contact the filing office right away rather than assuming an extension is available.

Redacting Personal Information Before You File

Financial disclosures are public documents, but certain personal information must be removed before filing. When you attach supporting documents like brokerage statements or transaction summaries, redact account numbers, Social Security numbers, home addresses, and the names of your spouse or dependent children yourself before submission. The filing office does not do this for you.⁹

The report form itself uses value ranges rather than exact dollar figures, which gives you some privacy while still letting voters and oversight agencies evaluate potential conflicts. You report a holding as worth between $100,001 and $250,000; you do not write down $187,432.

Penalties for Late or Missing Filings

Consequences scale quickly from administrative to campaign-ending.

At the federal level, any candidate who files more than 30 days past the deadline (including any extension) owes a flat $200 late filing fee to the U.S. Treasury.¹⁰ That fee applies regardless of intent. If the failure is more than an oversight, the Attorney General can bring a civil action against anyone who knowingly and willfully falsifies a report or fails to file, with courts authorized to impose penalties up to $75,540 per violation.¹¹ Criminal prosecution is possible for supplying false information on a disclosure report.

State penalties look different. Many states impose a daily fine for each day a report is overdue, commonly $10 to $50 per day, sometimes capped and sometimes not. The most immediate consequence at the state and local level is often practical: the filing officer can refuse to process your nomination papers if the disclosure is missing, which removes you from the ballot. That makes this one of the few administrative deadlines in politics where the penalty is not just money but the end of the campaign.

After You File: Resolving Conflicts

Filing the disclosure is the reporting step. If your holdings create a genuine conflict with the office you are seeking, resolving that conflict is a separate process. The two main tools are a qualified blind trust, which transfers management of your investments to an independent trustee reviewed and certified by the Office of Government Ethics,¹² and divestiture, which can be paired with a Certificate of Divestiture from the Office of Government Ethics to defer capital gains tax under 26 U.S.C. 1043 if you reinvest the proceeds into permitted property within 60 days.¹³ The certificate must be obtained before the sale; the Office of Government Ethics does not issue them retroactively.¹⁴ Neither tool is part of the initial filing itself, but both are worth knowing about before you decide what to put on the form.

1
Congress.gov. Financial Disclosure in the U.S. Government: Frequently Asked Questions
2
eCFR. Executive Branch Financial Disclosure, Qualified Trusts, and Certificates of Divestiture
3
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 5 USC App 102 – Contents of Reports
4
OGE. OGE Form 278e Public Financial Disclosure Report
5
U.S. House Committee on Ethics. Financial Disclosure Instruction Guide (Form B)
6
eCFR. 5 CFR 2634.311 – Spouses and Dependent Children
7
U.S. House Committee on Ethics. Financial Disclosure Report (Form B)
8
U.S. House Committee on Ethics. Candidate Financial Disclosure Extension Request Form
9
U.S. House Committee on Ethics. Instruction Guide for Financial Disclosure Statements and PTRs
10
eCFR. 5 CFR 2634.704 – Late Filing Fee
11
eCFR. 5 CFR Part 2634 Subpart G – Penalties
12
eCFR. 5 CFR Part 2634 Subpart D – Qualified Trusts
13
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 1043 – Sale of Property to Comply With Conflict-of-Interest Requirements
14
eCFR. 5 CFR Part 2634 Subpart J – Certificates of Divestiture