So what? You say. Everyone who can takes advantage of these! Here's the problem: Bernie's deductions are much, much higher than the average person - both for the home mortgage interest deduction as well as his property tax deduction. For example, the average home mortgage deduction claimed by filers in Vermont is about $8,500. Bernie and Jane Sanders claimed almost 3 times this amount.

To see why, look at the line above. Jane and Bernie Sanders claimed almost $15,000 in property taxes. Given the average home value of $258,000 in Burlington, VT (the Sanders' residence), and a property tax rate of at best 2.5%, this would yield an expected property tax of ... $6,569, less than half the amount Sanders claimed.

But he owns property in DC too! According his 2012 financial disclosures, the mortgage for his DC condo is a 30 year loan for less than $100,000. Even at a high interest rate of 3.9%, Bernie could claim his entire payment as interest (which would of course be illegal) and he'd still not make up the $14,500 gap in mortgage deduction.

To put all this another way, Sanders' property value would have to be almost $600,000 to meet his claimed property tax deduction, and the size of his mortgage would have to be three times higher than average (or, he'd have to have pretty terrible credit).

So, whether this is because the couple owns multiple real estate properties (they do own rental properties, Politico reported last year, but rental income is not shown on the 2014 tax return), only in a privileged fanboy world can Bernie Sanders be described as every-man.

Bernie and Jane have certainly done well for themselves on largely government salaries. And there's nothing wrong with that, unless you are running for president on the ground that the rich pay too little in taxes while yourself taking advantage of tax breaks that massively skew toward the wealthy to the tune of two-to-three times the what the average homeowner can claim. There's nothing wrong with that, unless you are running a campaign centered around billionaires taking advantage of tax breaks too much while it turns out that, despite being in the top 4% of income earners, you pay a lower federal income tax rate than the candidate of the billionaires. There's nothing wrong with having done well for yourself, unless you are running for president on the primary basis that others who have done better than you (and pay more than twice your tax rate) are by definition corrupt.