Trump’s tax returns released after lawsuit

After years of legal wrangling, a committee of the US Congress has released tax documents of former President Donald Trump (76). The Democrat-led House Treasury Committee posted thousands of pages of Trump tax documents from 2015 to 2020 on Friday.

It shows, according to the panel, that Trump has paid little or no federal income tax for years, despite boasting about his wealth. Trump had used legal means for years to resist handing over the documents to the Finance Committee — and finally failed in the US Supreme Court a few weeks ago.

Only $750 in income tax for the first year in office

The committee had previously filed two reports detailing a large amount of information from the tax documents and decided with the majority of Democrats to make the original documents at least partially accessible to the public — or obscure sensitive information. That followed now. It’s a huge amount of data.

The pre-summary reports released by the committee last week already include detailed information from Trump’s tax returns for the years 2015 to 2020 — i.e. from the period just before and during his term as president.

In 2016, the year he was elected, and in 2017, his first year in the White House, Trump paid just $750 in federal income taxes and claimed huge losses. Then in 2018, he reported millions in profits and paid about $1 million in income taxes. In the last year in office, 2020, Trump paid no income tax at all.

“Aggressive Tax Strategies”

The New York Times had already reported in the middle of the 2020 presidential election campaign that Trump paid only $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017. This was made possible by write-offs and credits, partly due to high losses. Trump denied this at the time, claiming he had paid “millions”.

The finance committee recently lamented, “Numerous reports revealed that the former president had pursued aggressive tax strategies and decades of tax avoidance strategies through the complex regulation of his personal and business finances.”

One of the two reports the panel released last week also stated that the IRS had not properly audited Trump. In the four years of his tenure, only one mandatory audit had been initiated and not one completed. Trump had always insisted throughout his presidency that his tax documents were audited — which is why he couldn’t publish them.

Failed in the Supreme Court

Contrary to common practice in the United States, real estate entrepreneur Trump did not make his tax returns public, either as a presidential candidate or after taking office in the White House. Critics therefore suspected that he had something to hide – also because he defended himself with all legal means against the disclosure of the documents.

The Finance Committee in the House of Representatives has been trying for years to get hold of the tax documents. During the Trump administration, the Treasury Department initially stood in the way. It wasn’t until his Democratic successor Joe Biden’s administration last year that the Treasury Department finally directed the IRS to turn over the documents to the committee. Trump defended himself in court and tried several instances until his only option was to go to the Supreme Court, where he finally failed in November.

Trump plans to run again

This was a last-minute success for the committee: as Republicans won the majority in the House of Representatives in the congressional elections and will lead it next week, the Democrat-led body had little time to act on the matter. doing. .

Trump had previously protested the planned publication of the documents: “You can’t learn much from tax returns, but it’s illegal to publish them if they don’t belong to you,” he warned. The Republican announced in November that he plans to run again as his party’s presidential candidate in the 2024 election. (SDA)