WASHINGTON (AP) — The Democratic-controlled House Ways and Means Committee will vote Tuesday on whether to release years of Donald Trump’s tax returns that the former president has long tried to protect.
Committee Chairman Richard Neal, D-Massachusetts, maintained tight control over the committee’s actions, including whether the group would meet in public or private session. And if lawmakers move forward with plans to unlock the revenue, it’s unclear how quickly that will happen.
But after a years-long battle that finally led to the Supreme Court last month clearing the way for the Treasury Department to send returns to Congress, Democrats are under pressure to act aggressively. The committee obtained six years of tax returns for Trump and some of his assets. And with just two weeks before Republicans officially take control of the House, Tuesday’s meeting could be the last opportunity for Democrats to reveal whatever information they have obtained.
Trump has long had a complicated relationship with personal income taxes.
As a presidential candidate in 2016, he broke with decades of precedent by refusing to release his tax forms. During a presidential debate that year, he boasted that he was “smart” for not paying federal taxes and later said he would not personally benefit from the tax cuts he signed in 2017, which favors the ultra-rich, asking Americans to simply take him at his word.
Tax records would have been a useful measure in assessing the success of his business. The image of a savvy businessman was key to a political brand honed during his years as a tabloid magnet and star of TV’s “The Apprentice.” He could also reveal any financial obligations, including foreign debts, that could affect how he governed.
But Americans were largely unaware of Trump’s relationship with the IRS until October 2018 and September 2020, when The New York Times published two separate series based on leaked tax documents.
Photo AP/J. Scott Applewhite, Dossier
The 2018 Pulitzer Prize-winning articles showed how Trump received the modern equivalent of at least $413 million from his father’s real estate holdings, much of that money coming from what the Times called “tax evasion” in the 1990s. 90. Trump sued The Times and his niece, Mary Trump, in 2021 for providing newspaper records. In November, Mary Trump asked an appeals court to overturn a judge’s decision to dismiss her claims that her uncle and two of her brothers defrauded her out of millions of dollars in a 2001 family settlement.
The 2020 articles showed that Trump paid only $750 in federal income taxes in 2017 and 2018. Trump paid no income tax in 10 of the last 15 years because he generally lost more money than he earned.
The articles exposed stark inequalities in the US tax code, as Trump, a well-known multi-billionaire, paid little in federal income taxes. IRS data shows the average taxpayer paid about $12,200 in 2017, about 16 times what the former president paid.
Details of Trump’s income from foreign operations and level of debt were also contained in his tax return, which the former president derided as “fake news”.
At the time of the 2020 articles, Neal said he saw an ethics problem with Trump overseeing a federal agency he fought with and legal documents.
“Donald Trump now leads the agency he considers an adversary,” Neal said in 2020. “It is imperative that the IRS’s presidential audit program remain free of interference.”
The Manhattan district attorney’s office also obtained copies of Trump’s tax returns in February 2021 after a protracted legal battle that included two trips to the Supreme Court.
The office, then led by District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., sued Trump’s accounting firm in 2019, seeking access to eight years of Trump’s tax returns and related documents.
Prosecutors issued the subpoena after Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, told Congress that Trump misled tax officials, insurers and business associates about the value of his assets. Those allegations are the subject of a fraud lawsuit New York Attorney General Letitia James filed against Trump and his company in September.
Longtime Trump accountant Donald Bender testified at the Trump Organization’s recent criminal trial that Trump reported losses on his tax returns every year for a decade, including nearly $700 million in 2009 and $200 million in 2009. 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 include net operating losses from some of the many businesses he owns through the organization his Trump.
The Trump Organization was convicted earlier this month of tax fraud for helping some executives avoid taxes on company-paid perks such as condos and luxury cars.
Current Manhattan U.S. Attorney Alvin Bragg said in an interview with The Associated Press last week that his office’s investigation into Trump and his dealings is continuing.
“We will follow the facts and continue to do our job,” Bragg said.
Trump, who refused to release his returns during his 2016 presidential campaign and four years in the White House while claiming he was under IRS scrutiny, has argued that there isn’t much to glean from his tax returns, though he fought to keep them. private.
“You can’t learn much from tax returns, but it’s illegal to file them if they’re not yours!” he complained on his social network last weekend.
Meanwhile, Republicans have criticized a possible release, arguing it would set a dangerous precedent.
Representative. Kevin Brady of Texas, the Republican leader of the Ways and Means Committee, accused the panel’s Democrats of “unleashing a dangerous new political weapon that goes far beyond President Trump and endangers the privacy of every American.”
“Partisans in Congress continue to have almost unlimited power to target political enemies by obtaining and releasing their private tax returns to embarrass and destroy them,” Brady said in a statement. “We urge Democrats, in their rush to target former President Trump, not to unleash this dangerous new political weapon against the American people.”
Kinnard reported from Columbia, South Carolina. Associated Press writers Michael R. Sisak and Jill Colvin in New York contributed to this report.
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