Trump tax returns: key takeaways from record releases | Donald Trump

[ad_1]

In one of its last acts under Democratic control, the House of Representatives on Friday released six years of Donald Trumps tax returns, dating back to 2015, the year he announced his presidential bid.

The thousands of pages of returns have been the subject of a protracted legal battle after Trump broke precedent by not releasing his tax returns while running for, and then occupying, the White House.

Here are some important takeaways from the review of the documents:

Trump has a bank account in China

During a 2020 presidential debate, Trump was asked about having a bank account in China. He said he closed it before he began his campaign for the White House four years ago.

The bank account was in 2013. It was closed in 2015, I believe, Trump said. I thought about making a deal with China. Like millions of other people, I think about it. I decided not to do it.

Tax returns conflict with that account. Trump reported a bank account in China on his returns for 2015, 2016 and 2017.

The returns show accounts in other foreign countries including the UK, Ireland and St Martin in the Caribbean. In 2018, Trump appears to have closed all of his overseas accounts except for one in the UK, which is home to one of his flagship golf properties.

The returns do not detail the amount of money held in those accounts.

No charitable giving was reported in 2020

In the last year of his presidency, Trump reported no charitable donations. That’s in contrast to the previous two years, when Trump reported about $500,000 (414,060) worth of donations. It is unclear whether any of the figures include his promise to give his $400,000 presidential salary back to the US government. He reported giving $1.1m in 2016 and $1.8m in 2017.

Money from the art world

Trump collected a $77,808 annual pension from the Screen Actors Guild and a $6,543 pension in 2017 from another film and TV union, and reported acting earnings as high as $14,141 in 2015, according to tax returns.

Trump has made cameo appearances in various films, most notably Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, but his biggest on-screen success came on his reality TV shows The Apprentice and The Celebrity Apprentice.

Trump reportedly paid more than $400,000 from 2015 to 2017 in fees to book writers. In 2015, Trump published the book, Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again, with a ghostwriter. That same year, Trump reportedly received $750,000 in fees for speaking engagements.

Trump promised payment

Trump broke with political tradition by not releasing his tax returns as a candidate or as president. Now Republicans are warning that Democrats will pay a political price by releasing what is normally confidential information.

Trump emphasized that in a statement Friday morning, after his returns were made public.

The great divide in the USA will now grow, he said. The Radical Left Democrats have used everything, but remember, that is a dangerous two-way street!

Republicans on the House ways and means committee, which has jurisdiction over tax matters and released the Trump documents, warned that in the future the committee could release the returns of labor leaders or supreme court justices. Democrats have opposed a proposal to require the release of tax returns of any presidential candidate legislation that is unlikely to pass, as Republicans control the House next week.

Republicans cannot release Joe Bidens tax returns because they are already public. Biden continued a long-standing bipartisan tradition of releasing his tax records, revealing 22 years worth of filings during his 2020 campaign.

[ad_2]