by Viviana Mazza
Green lighted to disclosure of statements from 2015 to 2020 last night. The decision comes after a long legal battle. In early December, the Trump Organization was convicted of tax fraud
FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
NEW YORK — In the first three years of his presidency, Donald Trump paid $1.1 million in taxes, while he didn’t pay a single dollar in 2020, when he reported $4.8 million in losses. In all, Trump has reported 60 million casualties over the four years of his presidency. This is the first data filtered through tax returns and documents in the hands of the House’s Ways and Means Committee.
The commission last night voted to disclose six years of Donald Trump’s tax returns, from 2015 to 2020 (with opposition from minority Republican members on the panel). The commission promptly released a dozen-page summary showing that the IRS, which is responsible for tax collection, failed to audit Trump’s tax returns for the first two years of his presidency, as required by its own regulations. One of the reasons may be that since 2018, the head of the IRS himself, Charles P. Rettig, who left his post last month, had been appointed by Trump: a former Beverly Hills tax attorney whom he defends in a Forbes article had the tycoon’s 2016 decision not to release tax returns. When asked by the Commission why this had not happened, he replied that there were no specialists and resources to conduct such a review.
It may take days, but eventually Trump’s tax returns (thousands of pages) will be released after withholding potentially sensitive data. It’s not clear if they will provide additional information beyond what is already known, thanks in particular to a 2018 New York Times investigation that uncovered two decades of debt by Trump and dubious maneuvers to avoid paying federal taxes. Also last month, the Trump Organization in New York was convicted of tax fraud. Some are praising the commission’s decision to disclose papers in its possession, which were acquired after a legal battle that began in 2019 and reached the Supreme Court. Others believe it was a breach of confidentiality required by the House Committee when it received this private data from the Treasury Department. A dangerous precedent for Republicans, turning tax documents into a political weapon. The Commission, on the other hand, recommends that Congress pass a law so that in the future – beyond the “Trump case” – controls of tax returns by the IRS are mandatory and the agency is equipped with the necessary resources to carry them out.
December 21, 2022 (change December 21, 2022 | 16:07)
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