A House committee is set to publish six years of Donald Trump’s tax returns on Friday, pulling back the curtain on financial records that the former president fought for years to keep secret.
The Democratic-controlled House Ways and Means Committee voted last week to release the returns, with some redactions of sensitive information, such as Social Security numbers and contact information. The deployment comes in an era of increasing Democratic control of the House and as Trump’s fellow Republicans prepare to take back power in the chamber.
The committee obtained six years of Trump’s personal and business tax records, from 2015 to 2020, while investigating what it said in a Dec. 20 report was the Internal Revenue Service’s failure to timely conduct mandatory audits of Trump during his presidency, as required by tax agency protocol. .
The release raises the potential for new revelations about Trump’s finances, which have been shrouded in mystery and intrigue since his days as a Manhattan real estate developer in the 1980s. That answer may take on added significance now that Trump has launched his third campaign for the White House.
Trump’s tax returns may provide the clearest picture yet of his finances during his tenure.
Trump, known for building skyscrapers and hosting a reality TV show before winning the White House, defied political norms by refusing to disclose his returns when he sought the presidency – although he provided limited details of his holdings and income on a mandatory disclosure form. .
However, Trump declared his wealth in the annual financial statements given to banks to secure loans and financial magazines to justify his place in the ranks of the world’s billionaires.
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Trump’s longtime accounting firm has denied the claims, and New York Attorney General Letitia James has filed a lawsuit alleging Trump and the Trump Organization inflated the value of their assets in their statements as part of a years-long fraud. Trump and his company deny wrongdoing.
It wouldn’t be the first time Trump’s tax returns have come under scrutiny. In October 2018, The New York Times published a series of Pulitzer Prize winners based on leaked tax records that revealed that Trump received at least $413 million in recent years from his father’s real estate holdings, with much of the money coming from what. The Times called it “tax dodges” in the 1990s.
The second series in 2020 shows that Trump paid only $750 in federal income tax in 2017 and 2018, and no income tax in 10 of the last 15 years because he generally lost more money than he made.
In a report last week, the Ways and Means Committee indicated that the Trump administration may be ignoring a post-Watergate requirement mandating an audit of the president’s tax filings.
The IRS only began reviewing Trump’s 2016 tax filings on April 3, 2019 — more than two years into his presidency — when Ways and Means Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., asked the agency for information related to tax returns.
In comparison, there are audits of President Joe Biden for the 2020 and 2021 tax years, said Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman. A spokesman for former President Barack Obama said Obama was audited in each of his eight years in office.
The attached report from the Congressional Nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation raised several red flags about aspects of Trump’s tax filing, including carryover losses, deductions related to conservation and charitable donations, and loans to his children that could be taxable gifts.
The House passed a bill in response that would require an audit of the president’s income tax filings. Republicans strongly opposed the legislation, raising concerns that legislation requiring audits would infringe on taxpayer privacy and could turn audits into weapons for political gain.
The measure, which was approved largely along party lines, has no chance of becoming law anytime soon with a new Republican-led House sworn in in January. However, this is seen as a starting point for future efforts to improve presidential oversight.
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Republicans have argued that the Democrats will regret the move after the Republicans take power next week, and they warned that the new GOP chairman of the committee will be under pressure to seek and make public the tax returns of other important people.
Every president and major party candidate since Richard Nixon has voluntarily made at least a summary of his tax information publicly available. Trump bucked the trend as a candidate and president, repeatedly insisting that his taxes were “audited” and could not be released.
Trump’s lawyers have been repeatedly rebuffed in their efforts to get the tax returns from the Ways and Means Committee. A three-judge federal appeals court panel in August upheld a lower court ruling granting the committee access.
Trump’s lawyers also tried and failed to block the Manhattan district attorney’s office from obtaining Trump’s tax records as part of an investigation into his business practices, losing twice at the Supreme Court.
Trump’s longtime accountant, Donald Bender, testified at the Trump Organization’s recent Manhattan criminal trial that Trump reported losses on his tax returns every year for a decade, including nearly $700 million in 2009 and $200 million in 2010.
Bender, a partner at Mazars USA LLP who spent years preparing Trump’s personal tax returns, said Trump’s reported losses from 2009 to 2018 included net operating losses from several businesses he owned through the Trump Organization.
The Trump Organization was indicted earlier this month on tax fraud charges for helping some executives evade taxes on company-paid perks such as apartments and luxury cars.
Associated Press writer Paul Wiseman in Washington contributed to this report.