A House committee voted to release Donald Trumps tax information to the public, capping a three-year legal saga initiated by Democrats to obtain and release the former presidents closely held financial documents.
House Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal released a report about the Internal Revenue Services audits of Trumps taxes late Tuesday, but the actual tax returns will be made public in a few days after the redaction of personal information, such as Social Security numbers.
The documents released include a report summarizing Trumps personal and business income and tax payments from 2015 through 2020, showing that he and his companies lost millions of dollars during some of the years he was running for president and in the White House.
The report, prepared by the non-partisan congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, calls into question the validity of several deductions Trump claimed, including some unsubstantiated charitable donations, loans to his children that may be taxable gifts, and questionable business expenses.
The committee report noted that there were fewer documents than expected for an audit as complex as Trumps. In 2020, there were no audit files at all.
Tuesdays action by the Ways and Means Committee over the objections of the panels Republicans comes in the waning days of the House Democratic majority and one day after another House panel recommended that Trump face criminal prosecution in connection with the Capitol insurrection.
The panel, which has an eight-seat Democratic majority, agreed on a party-line vote to release information from Trumps personal and business tax returns from 2015 to 2020. Democrats first requested the documents in 2019 to help aid an investigation into the annual audit of presidents. After a lengthy court battle, the Ways and Means Committee obtained the financial filings late last month.
The vote to release the taxes on Tuesday and a criminal referral from the panel investigating Jan. 6 Capitol attack on Monday follow a bad six-week stretch for Trump politically, during which he was blamed for the GOPs disappointing midterm election results and had what critics called a lackluster 2024 campaign launch marred by controversies.
This was not about being punitive, this was not about being malicious, Neal said about the committees decision to pursue and release the information.
Neal said that the IRS, which has a policy of annually auditing the president and vice president, failed to sufficiently audit Trump while he was president.
There werent any audits that took place. It was dormant, Neal told reporters about the IRSs presidential audit program.
Neal said he has introduced a bill that would compel the IRS to conduct an audit of a president within 90 days of taking the oath. He said the meager review of Trumps tax returns is indicative of a larger problem at the agency where there arent enough resources and specialized tax auditors to examine the finances of wealthy Americans.
The IRS only had one agent on, you know, 400 pass-through returns. And so its like no surprise that they did a very shallow, shallow audit, at least so far, Representative Don Beyer, a Virginia Democrat, told reporters. So theres the notion of if youre going to do it on someone with a tax return that complex, youre going to need to devote the resources.
Texas Representative Kevin Brady, the committees top Republican, said that Democrats are making a mistake in publicly releasing the tax documents of a leader of the opposing political party. He said that Republicans support Neals underlying goal to ensure that presidents are audited.
The point that we made very clearly is, if this seriously was their goal, to make sure that the presidential audit process worked, we wouldve been more than happy to work with them four years ago, Brady said, adding that then, it would not be necessary to establish this dangerous new precedent.
Though candidates for the US presidency arent required by law to show voters their tax returns, they have done so for decades as a gesture of transparency. Trump was the exception.
Trump has said that, on the advice of his lawyers, he wouldnt release his tax documents while hes under audit by the Internal Revenue Service and he says he has been audited constantly since 2004. There is no law that prevents tax returns under audit from being made public.
Trump has also said theres nothing to learn from his returns, that they are extremely complex so people wouldnt understand them, and that Americans who arent reporters dont care at all about whats in them.
The tax code allows the chairmen of the congressional tax committees to request the returns of any taxpayer, including the president. That information can then be made public by a majority vote of the committee. The tax returns have been very closely held because releasing tax information without authorization is a felony punishable by prison time.
Trumps unwillingness to release the documents has heightened speculation about what information about loans, business ties or his wealth they could contain.
Much of Trumps financial picture became public two years ago, when weeks ahead of the 2020 election the New York Times published excerpts of Trumps tax returns that showed he paid minimal taxes, including paying no income taxes in 10 of the past 15 years because of large losses that offset any profits.
The New York Times report said that many of Trumps businesses are struggling, with him putting more money into the firms than hes taking out, and that he earned millions abroad during his time in the White House, including from authoritarian-leaning countries such as the Philippines and Turkey. Trump dismissed the reporting as totally fake news.
Our new weekly Impact Report newsletter examines how ESG news and trends are shaping the roles and responsibilities of todays executives. Subscribe here.
