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Accusations of a taxpayer-subsidized paycheck and avoiding taxes has put Harold Ford Junior on the defensive.

After days of damaging headlines, the could-be candidate is turning the tables with a demand to Senator Kirsten Gillibrand via a surrogate, spokeswoman Tammy Sun.

"The question remains -- has she filed and paid all New York taxes on all New York income when she was a tobacco lawyer," Sun said.

Ford's message is less about alleging Gillibrand is a tax scofflaw, as reminding voters that before she ran for public office, the senator represented a big tobacco firm as a white shoe lawyer.

In either case, Gillibrand released three years of tax returns last year. That included her final full year, where she earned half a million dollars.

She has not released returns from prior years, in which she defended Phillip Morris against federal investigators.

When he ran for office in Tennessee, Ford Junior released his returns, but unlike Gillibrand, he entered office straight from law school.

While he's officially undeclared, Ford Junior hasn't been shy to poke at Gillibrand -- likening her and Senator Chuck Schumer to parakeets to paint them as pets of Washington powerbrokers.

On Wednesday, Team Ford escalated, calling her an unelected hypocrite.

But to Gillibrand's camp, it's Ford Junior who is the hypocrite. After all, the former congressman is leveling the charges while at the same time still refusing to reveal his tax returns over the past few years.

Those returns would show his bonus history at Merrill Lynch, which the government bailed out.

"This is Ford's latest attempt to deflect attention away from the simple, straightforward questions about whether he dodged paying New York taxes on his Merrill Lynch bonus," a Gillibrand spokesman said.

"Well, if anyone's a hypocrite, it's certainly the unelected Senator," Sun said. "If Harold Ford Junior runs and decides to seek the people's trust for the Senate seat in New York, he will of course release all of his tax returns. He is not yet a candidate."

Ford's team, for the first time Wednesday, said he paid New York income taxes on all Merrill Lynch earnings, even if he wasn't living in the state full time.

Gillibrand, meanwhile, acknowledged getting holiday bonuses as a lawyer, but aides said they weren't tied to any one case.