Trump Has Promised To Release His Tax Returns (And Then Not Done So) For Nearly A Quarter-Century
At long last, his returns for six years (2015-2020) will be public.
Donald Trump has promised to release copies of his tax returns — and then refused to do so — for at least 23 years. On Tuesday, the House Ways and Means Committee voted to release six years of Trump’s tax returns (2015-2020).
The Committee also revealed that the Internal Revenue Service failed to follow its own policy regarding Trump. Every president is supposed to be audited annually while in office, but Charles Rettig, the Trump-appointed head of the IRS, gave Trump special treatment and ignored the law for the first two years of Trump’s term. (Then Rettig “essentially made up his own legal justification for not releasing Trump’s tax returns when they were requested by Congress”.) Which means Trump was (spoiler alert) continually lying when he continually claimed he couldn’t release his returns was under audit: actually, that was a double lie. He could release his returns (audit or no audit) and he was not under audit.
As one person tweeted: “If Trump’s tax returns showed that he was as rich, successful and smart as he claims to be he would have already mailed autographed copies to every man, woman, person, camera, and TV in America.”
But instead . . .
Here are some of Trump’s tax return lies (my emphasis):
1999: “They’re very big. They’re very complex. But I would probably have — I probably wouldn’t have a problem with doing it.”
April 2011: “I’m going to do the tax returns when Obama does his birth certificate. I’d love to give my tax returns. I may tie my tax returns into Obama’s birth certificate.” [Days after the interview, Obama released his long-form birth certificate.]
2012: Trump demands Mitt Romney’s tax returns be released (Romney is a presidential candidate.) Trump adds that if a presidential candidate did not release his tax returns, people would think there was "almost, like, something wrong. What's wrong?"
May 2014: “If I decide to run for office, I’ll produce my tax returns. Absolutely. I would love to do that.”
January 2015: Trump says he is ready to disclose his “very big . . . very beautiful” tax returns.
February 2015: Trump says (again) if he runs for president, he will release his tax returns.
February 2015: “I have no objection to certainly showing tax returns.”
February 2015: “I will tell you upfront . . . I want to pay as little taxes as I can as a private person.”
February 2015: “I would release tax returns. . . . Nobody knows the tax return world better than me.”
April 2015: “I want to tell you right now I have no problem with giving my tax returns.”
October 2015:
George Stephanopoulos (ABC): “Getting any closer to releasing your tax returns?”
Trump: “Well, I’m thinking about it. I’m thinking about maybe when we find out the true story on Hillary’s emails — you know, I’ve been saying that for a while, let’s find out the true stories —”
Stephanopoulos: “Yes, that’s been your line, but she’s been putting some out.”
Trump: “But you know what? I’m very honest with my tax returns. . . .”
Stephanopoulos: “What is your tax rate?”
Trump: “I’m not going to say it, but at some point I’ll release it. But I pay as little as possible, I’m very proud to tell you.”
January 2016: Will Trump release his tax returns? “Absolutely . . . at the appropriate time, you’ll be very satisfied.”
February 2016: Trump says his tax returns will be released “probably over the next few months. They’re being worked on right now. [What’s the hold up?] They’re very — well, they’re very big tax returns — the biggest — I guarantee you this, the biggest ever in the history of what we’re doing.”
February 2016: “We’ll make a determination over the next couple of months. It’s very complicated.”
February 2016: Trump claims he cannot release his tax returns because he is under an IRS audit. That is a 100% lie. Important IRS Note: The IRS confirms that all individuals are free to share their tax information at any time. Nothing prevents any taxpayer from releasing their own returns.
May 2016: Trump refuses to release his tax returns before the November 2016 election.
May 2016: “[I will] release my tax returns when audit is complete, not after election!”
May 2016:
Trump: “I fight very hard to pay as little tax as possible.”
George Stephanopoulos (ABC): “What is your tax rate?”
Trump : “It’s none of your business. You’ll see it when I release. But I fight very hard to pay as little tax as possible.”
July 2016: “I haven’t had much pressure [to release tax returns]. I’ll be honest, most people don’t care.”
September 2016: “I’m under a routine audit, and it’ll be released. And as soon as the audit is finished, it will be released.”
September 2016: “When the audit is complete I will release my returns. I have no problem with it. It doesn’t matter.”
September 2016: “I will release my tax returns, against my lawyer’s wishes, when [Hillary Clinton] releases her 33,000 emails that have been deleted.”
October 2016: The New York Times reveals Trump declared a $916 million loss in 1995, which could have allowed him to pay no taxes at all for the next 18 years.
January 2017 (Trump is now in the White House): “I’m not releasing the tax returns because as you know they’re under audit.”
May 2017: “Maybe I’ll release them after I’m finished [out of office] because I’m very proud of them actually. I did a good job.”
October 2018: Trump’s frequent boast of being self-made billionaire is a total lie (both the self-made part and the billionaire part), according to an extensive New York Times investigation. Trump’s father gave him more than $400 million (in 2018 dollars), most of it in ways to avoid paying gift or inheritance tax.
In September 2016, the Washington Post published a long list of excuses given by Trump and others for why he has not released his tax returns (the months listed below are for 2016):
Excuses that Trump and his supporters have given for not releasing tax returns
Trump: “I’m being audited . . . so I can’t.” (See next section.) (Repeatedly since February)
Trump: “There’s nothing to learn from them.” (Fact-checkers say this is false.) (February, February, May, May, January)
Trump: “Mitt Romney looked like a fool when he delayed and delayed and delayed and . . . didn’t file until a month and a half before the election and it cost him big league.” (February, July)
Trump: His tax rate is “none of your business.” (May)
Paul Manafort, former campaign chairman: American people “wouldn’t understand them.” (May)
Manafort: The only people who want them “are the people who want to defeat him.” (May)
Trump: “I don’t think anybody cares.” (Polls show this is false.) (May, September)
Eric Trump, son: Would be “foolish” to release; “you would have a bunch of people who know nothing about taxes trying to look through and trying to come up with assumptions on things that they know nothing about.” (August)
Mike Pence, vice president who released his tax returns: They’re a “distraction.” (September)
Donald Trump Jr.: “Would distract from (his dad’s) main message.” (September)
Kellyanne Conway, then-campaign manager and current counselor to the president: “I just can’t find where this is a burning issue to most of the Americans.” (In April, before joining his campaign, Conway said, “Donald Trump’s tax returns aren’t . . . transparent” and called for their release.) (September)
Jeffrey Lord, commentator: Tax returns are “a political gimmick, a gotcha . . . Political opponents are going to go through there and look to make issues out of things.” (September)
Trump Jr.: “There’s a lot in a 12,000-page tax return that wouldn’t make sense to open up.” (September)
Trump: “You will learn more about Donald Trump” by looking at his financial disclosure forms than by looking at tax returns. (Fact-checkers say this is false.) (September)
Rudy Giuliani, Trump surrogate: “The way all of you are treating this is a very good indication of why someone might not want to release their tax returns.” (October)
Trump: Blames Clinton for fact he doesn’t pay taxes: “A lot of my write-off was depreciation, and that, Hillary as a senator, allowed. The people that give her all this money want it.” (As a senator, Clinton did vote to close tax loopholes — including one Trump may have used to pay no federal income taxes.) (October)
Trump: “The only ones that care about my tax returns are the reporters.” (Roughly 74 percent of Americans, including 53 percent of Republicans, say Trump should make his tax returns public, according to a Washington Post-ABC poll in January.) (January)
Conway: “People didn’t care. They voted for him, and let me make this very clear: Most Americans are very focused on what their tax returns will look like while President Trump is in office, not what his look like.” (January)
Why IRS audits do not prevent Trump from releasing his tax returns
Trump’s tax attorneys said in March that his returns since 2009 were being audited. The IRS said nothing, including an audit, “prevents individuals from sharing their own tax information.”
His tax attorneys said returns from 2002 to 2008 are no longer being audited. Neither are the returns from 1977 to 2002. Trump said he will still not release any of those returns because “they’re all linked.”
Multiple former IRS commissioners say audits are a bad excuse.
President Richard Nixon released his tax returns while under audit.
All major presidential nominees of the past 40 years have released their tax returns.
Trump can delay the completion of his audits.
As president, Trump will be automatically audited every year, an IRS practice in place for presidents and vice presidents since the 1970s.
Every elected president, dating back to Richard Nixon, has voluntarily released his tax returns each year.
What we would learn from Trump’s tax returns
How much (or how little) money he makes
How much (or how little) he pays in taxes
How much (or how little) he gives to charity
What deductions and tax credits he uses
His investments
His business partners
Who he owes money
What he writes off as business expenses
How much (or how little) money he keeps in foreign accounts (including in Russia)
What Trump has said about other people’s taxes
2011: Tweet: “We have to combat the welfare mentality that says individuals are entitled to live off taxpayers. #TimeToGetTough”
2011: Tweet: “You know what is the worst part of @BarackObama’s Tuesday speech playing class warfare–we paid for it with our tax dollars.”
2011: Says on Fox News, “Well, I don’t mind sacrificing for the country, to be honest with you. But you know, you do have a problem because half of the people don’t pay any tax. And when he’s talking about that he’s talking about people that aren’t also working, that are not contributing to this society. And it’s a problem. But we have 50 percent. It just hit the 50 percent mark. Fifty percent of the people are paying no tax.”
2012: Said Romney, the Republican presidential nominee, should release his tax returns: April 1 “historically is the time that everybody gives them.”
2012: Tweet: “HALF of Americans don’t pay income tax despite crippling govt debt . . .”
2012: Criticized Romney for delaying the release of his tax returns: “It’s a great thing when you can show that you’ve been successful and that you’ve made a lot of money.”
2012: Tweet: “@BarackObama who wants to raise all our taxes, only pays 20.5% on $790k salary. Do as I say not as I do.”
2013: Tweet: “@conservativeJT: @bluejoni @realDonaldTrump Trump is an American that will pay more taxes in one year than you pay in your entire life.”
2015: Tweet: “The hedge fund guys (gals) have to pay higher taxes ASAP. They are paying practically nothing. We must reduce taxes for the middle class!”
2015: Corporate executives “get away with murder” by using deductions to lower tax bills: “They make a fortune. They pay no tax. It’s ridiculous, okay?”
That Sound You Hear Is Donald Trump Screaming At The Mar-A-Lago Pool Boys Over The Release Of His Tax Returns And Possible Prison Time
Bess Levin, Vanity Fair, December 20, 2022
It was a rough Thanksgiving at Mar-a-Lago this year, and Christmas is not looking much better . . .
On Tuesday, one day after the January 6 committee recommended the Department of Justice charge the ex-president with four major crimes, Punchbowl News reported that the House panel “has begun extensively cooperating with the Justice Department’s special counsel charged with overseeing investigations into former president Donald Trump.” That special counsel, Jack Smith, reportedly sent the committee a letter on December 5, “requesting all of the panel’s materials from the 18-month probe,” and beginning last week, the panel started “sending Smith’s team documents and transcripts,” with plans to share more documents and transcripts in the coming days . . .
The reported cooperation marks a new front in the DOJ’s criminal investigation of Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election results and the insurrection that followed . . . [T]he committee’s year-plus of legwork, including interviews with more than 1,000 witnesses, could prove extremely valuable to Smith’s investigation. . . .
In other less-than-positive developments for the 2024 presidential candidate, the House Ways and Means Committee voted on Tuesday to publicly release six years of Trump’s tax returns, which it obtained earlier this month to the former guy’s extreme chagrin. Trump, of course, has spent years going to extreme lengths to keep his tax documents under lock and key: He invented a rule that he couldn’t release them because they were under audit; he begged the Supreme Court to save him; and he installed a Treasury secretary who effectively took a vow to hide every copy of the returns in his anal cavity—before the Treasury ultimately let Congress get its hands on them. . . .
[W]e’ve already learned a tremendous amount about Trump’s finances over the last several years. In 2019, for instance, Michael Cohen, the then president’s former attorney, told Congress that Trump regularly inflated and deflated the value of his assets when it benefited him. And earlier this year, the New York attorney general’s office sued Trump and his three eldest children on accusations of lying to lenders, insurers, and tax authorities about said assets. (At the time the suit was filed, an attorney for Trump insisted that “absolutely no wrongdoing has taken place.”)
Meanwhile, earlier this month, Trump’s family business was found guilty of multiple counts of tax fraud (among other things). And then, of course, there’s the 2018 story from the Times—which won a Pulitzer—revealing that Trump amassed much of his fortune through “dubious tax schemes,” some of which included “instances of outright fraud.” . . . Two years later, the same news organization revealed that Trump had paid $750 in federal income taxes in 2016, another $750 in 2017, and bupkis in 10 of the previous 15 years.