Donald Trump’s tax return was released after a long battle with Congress

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Democrats in Congress released six years worth of former US President Donald Trump’s tax returns on Friday, the culmination of a year-long effort to find out about the finances of a onetime business mogul that broke decades of political custom when he refused to voluntarily release the information while he was searching for the White House.

The returns, which include redactions of some sensitive personal information such as Social Security and bank account numbers, range from 2015 to 2020.

Their release follows a party-line vote in the House Ways and Means Committee last week to make the returns public.

President Donald Trump arrives to speak at an event at Mar-a-Lago, Friday, Nov. 18, 2022, in Palm Beach, Florida (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

Committee Democrats argued that transparency and the rule of law were at stake, while Republicans countered that the release would set a dangerous precedent regarding the loss of privacy protections.

Trump refused to release his returns when he ran for president and fought a legal battle to keep them secret while he was in the White House. But the Supreme Court ruled last month that he had to hand them over to the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee.

The release, just days before Trump’s fellow Republicans wrest control of the House from Democrats, raises the potential of new revelations about Trump’s finances, which have been shrouded in mystery and intrigue since his days as a up-and-coming Manhattan real estate developer in the 1980s.

The returns may take on added significance now that Trump has launched a campaign for the White House in 2024.

They are likely to provide the clearest picture of his finances during his tenure.

Trump, known for building skyscrapers and hosting a reality TV show before winning the White House, provided limited details about his holdings and income on mandatory disclosure forms.

The report from the House Ways & Means Committee, regarding the tax return of the IRS and former President Donald Trump, is pictured on Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2022. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick)

He promoted his wealth in the annual financial statements he provided to banks to obtain loans and to financial magazines to justify his position in the rankings of the world’s billionaires.

Trump’s longtime accounting firm has since denied the statements, and New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit alleging Trump and his Trump Organization inflated asset values ​​in the statements as part a year of fraud. Trump and his company have denied wrongdoing.

This isn’t the first time Trump’s tax returns have come under scrutiny.

In October 2018, The New York Times published a Pulitzer Prize-winning series based on leaked tax records that showed Trump received the modern-day equivalent of at least $US413 million ($608 million) from real his father’s estate, with much of the money coming from what the Times called “tax dodges” in the 1990s.

A second series in 2020 showed that Trump paid only $US750 ($1105) in federal income taxes in 2017 and 2018, as well as no income taxes at all in 10 of the last 15 years because he generally lost him more money than he earns.

Former US President Donald Trump leaves the stage after speaking at an event at his Mar-a-Lago home on November 15, 2022 in Palm Beach, Florida. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

In its report last week, the Ways and Means Committee indicated that the Trump administration may have ignored a post-Watergate requirement that mandates audits of a president’s tax filings.

The IRS only began auditing Trump’s tax filings on April 3, 2019 more than two years into his presidency when committee chairman Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., asked the agency for information related to tax returns.

In comparison, there are audits of President Joe Biden for the 2020 and 2021 tax years, said Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman. Former President Barack Obama’s spokesman said Obama was audited in each of his eight years in office.

A report from Congress’s nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation raised several red flags about aspects of Trump’s tax filings, including his carryover losses, deductions related to conservation and charitable donations, and loans to his children which may be taxable gifts.

The House passed a bill in response that would require an audit of any president’s income tax filings. Republicans strongly opposed the legislation, raising concerns that a law requiring audits would infringe on taxpayer privacy and could lead to audits being weaponized for political gain.

The measure, approved mostly along party lines, has little chance of becoming law anytime soon with a new Republican-led House sworn in in January. Rather, it is seen as a starting point for future efforts to strengthen presidential oversight.

Republicans have argued that Democrats will regret the move when Republicans take power next week, and they have warned that the committee’s new GOP chairman will be forced to find and make public the tax returns of other high-profile figures. person.

Every presidential and major party candidate since Richard Nixon has voluntarily made at least summaries of their tax information publicly available. Trump bucked that trend as a candidate and as president, repeatedly insisting that his taxes were “under audit” and could not be released.

Trump’s lawyers have been repeatedly rebuffed in their efforts to keep his tax returns from the House committee. A three-judge federal appeals court panel in August upheld a lower court decision granting access to the committee.

Trump’s lawyers also tried and failed to block the Manhattan district attorney’s office from obtaining Trump’s tax records as part of its investigation into his business practices, losing twice in the Supreme Court.

Trump’s longtime accountant, Donald Bender, testified at the Trump Organization’s recent criminal trial in Manhattan that Trump reported losses on his tax returns every year for a decade, including nearly $US700 million ( $1 billion) in 2009 and $US200 million ($300 million) in 2010.

Bender, a partner at Mazars USA LLP who spent years preparing Trump’s personal tax returns, said Trump’s reported losses from 2009 to 2018 included net operating losses from several of the many business he owns through the Trump Organization.

The Trump Organization was convicted earlier this month on tax fraud charges for helping some executives avoid taxes on company-paid perks like apartments and luxury cars.

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