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WASHINGTON — House Democrats Friday released six years of former President Donald J. Trump’s tax records, making the closely guarded documents public after years of legal battles and speculation about Mr. Trump’s wealth and financial entanglements.
The release came 10 days after Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee published two reports on Trump’s taxes as part of an investigation into the Internal Revenue Service’s practice of conducting mandatory audits of presidents while in office. to be. The reports revealed that the IRS failed to audit Mr. Trump during the first two years of his presidency and did not begin the investigation process until 2019, after House Democrats launched surveillance proceedings in an attempt to access his tax records.
“Our findings turned out to be simple — IRS did not begin their mandatory audit of the former president until I made my initial request,” Massachusetts Representative Richard E. Neal, the chair of the Ways and Means Committee, said in a written statement. on Friday.
While much of the information in the tax returns has already come to light, including through the two reports released last week, the full data from 2015 through 2020 is expected to provide a rare picture of the complexities of finance. of Mr. Trump and whether he may have benefited from the tax policies he signed as president. Those include the Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2017, which provided a series of tax breaks and reductions for businesses and wealthy people.
Data released last week showed that Mr. Trump paid $1.1 million in federal income taxes during the first three years of his presidency, but paid no taxes in 2020 as his income declined and losses widened. During his first year in office, Mr. Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes and reported $12.9 million in losses.
The impartial Joint Committee on Taxation, which reviewed Trump’s tax returns for the House Ways and Means Committee, found several red flags in the former president’s documents that it said warranted further investigation. Those include dealings with his children and a deduction he took in connection with the settlement of fraud claims against the now-defunct Trump University.
Tax returns are among the most private documents in the United States. While Congress has the power to obtain and release them, it rarely takes such action.
After Trump broke with tradition and refused to release his return as a presidential candidate or while in office, Democratic lawmakers sought them out over concerns about potential conflicts of interest. Eventually, they were able to unlock them using their oversight powers through the investigation of IRS policies of controlling presidents and vice presidents.
In 2020, after obtaining data from more than two decades of Mr. Trump’s tax returns, The New York Times traced the boom-and-bust arcs of his financial history: dubious tax avoidance, huge losses, and a life propped up by a inherited fortune. The recently released tax returns show how that pattern stretched through his years in Washington.
The Ways and Means Committee reports also highlighted the IRS’s inability to deal with the army of lawyers, accountants and tax professionals hired by Trump to defend him in the audits of his returns before, during and after his presidency.
“With more than 400 flow-through returns reported on Form 1040, it is not possible to obtain the available resources to investigate all potential issues,” IRS agents said of Mr. Trump’s tax returns in an internal memo the committee released last week. .
Republicans warned that the release of a private citizen’s tax returns would set a dangerous precedent and lead to public pressure on GOP lawmakers to respond by releasing other sets of tax returns once they take control of the House next week.
During a closed-door hearing last week ahead of the party-line vote to release Trump’s returns, Republicans specifically raised the possibility of releasing tax information related to President Biden’s family — likely including his son Hunter Biden.
“I’ve been to 42 states this election cycle and heard countless people talk about things they care about President Biden’s family relationships and how they believed he and his family have been enriched because of his political power,” Representative Jason Smith, Republican of Missouri, said in a transcript of the hearing. “And they beg for oversight and accountability for that.”
Alan Rappeport reported from Washington and Jim Tankersley from St. Croix, VI
