ALON SKUY/AFP
After a long struggle to keep his tax receipts secret, the former President of the United States saw this information become public following a vote by a committee in the US House of Representatives.
UNITED STATES – He had fought real litigation to keep that information private. This Wednesday, December 21, details are beginning to emerge about the taxes Donald Trump paid during his tenure.
According to a report reviewed by lawmakers Wednesday, Donald Trump has paid $1.1 million in federal taxes in two of his four years in office, but has paid next to nothing for the remainder of his tenure in the White House.
The extent of Trump’s fortune
The Republican paid $750 in income taxes in 2017, $1 million in 2018 and 2019, and nothing in 2020 as his losses widened. Those figures, released late Tuesday in a parliamentary committee report, show the 76-year-old billionaire reported huge deficits between 2015 and 2020.
But his earnings soared in 2018 and 2019, fueling speculation about the extent of his fortune as Congress prepares to release his tax returns. For example, the businessman-turned-politician recorded capital gains from asset sales of $22 million in 2018 and $9 million the following year.
But he lost nearly $65 million during his campaign for the presidency in 2015 and 2016 and around $13 million in his first year in office. As a result, in 2020 his income was down $5 million, hence the absence of taxes in the final year of his tenure.
The Zeal of the American Treasurer
This report also shows that Donald Trump had net operating losses of $105 million on his return in 2015, $73 million in 2016, $45 million in 2017, and $23 million in 2018 put forward to reduce tax liabilities.
“Trump reported tens of millions of dollars in losses and loans without the kind of justifications that an ordinary taxpayer would likely provide,” Democratic lawmaker Lloyd Doggett said in a statement. In addition, a separate parliamentary report on the US tax authorities showed that they had not done what they were supposed to do for most of Donald Trump’s tenure.
“Financial authorities only opened a mandatory audit for statements filed during the former president’s tenure from 2017 to 2020,” the text reads. The IRS began scrutinizing Donald Trump the same day Democrats on the commission requested information about his 2019 taxes.
Three years to get the documents
Unlike all his predecessors, Donald Trump, who has started a new race for the White House for 2024, had not made his tax returns public since the 1970s, which raises many questions as to their substance.
A House of Representatives committee, which meets with a Democratic majority on tax issues in particular and until the new Republican majority is installed in early January, voted 24 to 16 on Tuesday to publish the six-year billionaire tax sheets between 2015 and 2020.
For three years, this group of elected officials demanded the documents that the billionaire had sent to the tax authorities during those years, which he refused. The Supreme Court finally ruled in her favor at the end of November. On the other hand, only a handful of elected officials have been able to read it so far.
Donald Trump’s lack of transparency, who used his wealth as a campaign argument, has fueled speculation about the amount of his wealth or possible conflicts of interest for years.
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