House committee releases Trump tax returns

A US House committee released to the public Friday six years of former President Donald Trump’s tax returns, just days before Republicans seize power of the house in early 2023.

The release of Trump’s statements from 2015 to 2020 was a longstanding battle between the former president and Democratic lawmakers that was finally decided by the Supreme Court last month.

It’s another blow for Trump, 76, who was twice impeached by the Democratic-controlled House and acquitted by the Senate.

Earlier this month, the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021 storming of the Capitol recommended federal prosecutors charge Trump with four counts, including obstruction and insurrection, for his role in the riots. .

The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee requested the tax returns in 2019, claiming that Congress needed them to determine compliance with a presidential tax law.

Republicans said the decision could lead to the weaponization of personal tax returns and warned that party members who take over the panel in January will be under pressure to follow suit against prominent Democrats.

Trump, who became president in 2017, was the only presidential candidate in decades not to disclose his taxes and even sued the commission to try to keep them private, but Supreme Court justices voted in favor of the commission.

In a report last week, the commission released a preliminary examination of documents saying the Internal Revenue Service violated its own rules by failing to audit Trump for three of the four years he was president.

Details previously released by the panel showed that Trump paid no income tax in 2020, his last full year in the White House, despite racking up millions of dollars in profits from his business empire.

Records show that Trump’s taxes and liabilities fluctuated wildly from 2015 to 2020, during his first presidential bid and his four years as president.

The documents show that Trump and his wife Melania claimed large deductions and losses and paid little or no taxes in several of those years.

Democrats were short of time to find a way to handle the statements once they got them, because Republicans will take control of the House in January.

The current Democratic-controlled House of Representatives passed a bill before going into winter recess that makes it mandatory for the Internal Revenue Service to complete audits of presidents’ tax returns within the first 90 days of their inauguration.

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