PanamaTimes

Friday, Dec 08, 2023

The long journey to getting Trump's taxes released

The long journey to getting Trump's taxes released

Former President Donald Trump's tax returns have been released, ending a bitter six-year long battle to gain greater insights into his finances.

The returns stretch from 2015 through 2020, covering Mr Trump's candidacy and time in the White House.

They give details of various entities through which he would have paid tax, including holdings companies and personal income.

The BBC is reviewing the documents.

Responding to Friday's release of thousands of pages of tax returns, Mr Trump's camp warned that the disclosure will lead to the US political divide becoming "far worse".

"The Democrats should have never done it, the Supreme Court should have never approved it, and it's going to lead to horrible things for so many people," his statement said.

Ever since his entry into politics, critics have been keen to get Mr Trump - whose foundational pitch to voters had been that his business success made him the best choice to run the country - to show what his wealth actually looked like.

He had steadfastly refused.

Democrats who control the House of Representatives and oversaw the release argued that it was a necessary act of oversight.

Representative Don Beyer, a member of the House Ways and Means Committee which released the documents, said on Friday that Mr Trump "abused the power of his office to block basic transparency on his finances and conflicts of interest which no president since Nixon has foregone."

The committee also found that the Internal Revenue Service - the US federal entity charged with tax collection - failed to audit Mr Trump during his first two years in office, and only began doing so after congressional oversight proceedings were started in 2019.

Here's what it took to get to the disclosures made public.


Trump defies tradition


For decades, presidential candidates and officeholders have released their tax returns to the public in the interest of transparency and accountability.

The longstanding tradition is "mainly about trying to ensure the public that the president is operating free of conflicts and entanglements, and taxes are sort of the window into the financial soul of someone," said Steve Rosenthal, senior fellow at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

But Mr Trump "crashed all the norms," Mr Rosenthal said, by refusing to release his tax returns as a candidate when he ran for office in the 2016 presidential election.

His fierce insistence on the matter invited scrutiny and speculation among critics that he had something to hide - could it be that Mr Trump was not as rich as he claimed, some asked, or that he had paid less tax than he should?

Supporters, meanwhile, backed his right to his privacy. After all, there is no legal requirement for a candidate to release their tax returns.


New York Times investigations


But over the course of his presidency and afterward, the public has gradually come to gain some insight into Mr Trump's personal tax history.

A great deal of those revelations come from an investigation published by the New York Times in 2020, which obtained two decades of Mr Trump's tax returns from before his time in office. The documents gave unprecedented insight into Mr Trump's businesses.

They revealed he paid little to no federal income taxes over that period, and that Mr Trump had reported in his tax filings that his businesses lost significant amounts of money - despite his public boasts of financial success. In 2017, the Times reported, Trump paid just $750 (£623) in federal income tax despite being a billionaire.

The New York Times reporting "calls into question whether he's a billionaire, or is there some trick he uses to avoid pay taxes, legal or not," Mr Rosenthal said.


Taking the fight to the Supreme Court


Meanwhile, in Washington, Democrats began using their powers to conduct oversight of Mr Trump once they gained control of the House of Representatives in early 2019.

The Ways and Means Committee fought for three years to obtain Mr Trump's tax returns.

The fight went all the way to the US Supreme Court this year, and in November, the justices refused to block the release of Mr Trump's tax returns to the committee, thereby paving the way for their release.

On 21 December, the committee voted to release the tax returns they had obtained to the public, with the vote splitting along party lines.

Friday's release of the tax documents come mere days before Republicans are set to take over control of the House of Representatives, potentially signalling the end of any continued pursuit of looking into Mr Trump's finances for the foreseeable future.

It is possible that the US Senate, which is controlled by Democrats, could continue investigations.

Newsletter

Related Articles

PanamaTimes
Close
0:00
0:00
Venezuela Steps Up Claim on Guyana's Essequibo Region
Paper straws found to contain long-lasting and potentially toxic chemicals - study
FTX's Bankman-Fried headed for jail after judge revokes bail
Blackrock gets half a trillion dollar deal to rebuild Ukraine
Israel: Unprecedented Civil Disobedience Looms as IDF Reservists Protest Judiciary Reform
America's First New Nuclear Reactor in Nearly Seven Years Begins Operations
Southeast Asia moves closer to economic unity with new regional payments system
Today Hunter Biden’s best friend and business associate, Devon Archer, testified that Joe Biden met in Georgetown with Russian Moscow Mayor's Wife Yelena Baturina who later paid Hunter Biden $3.5 million in so called “consulting fees”
Singapore Carries Out First Execution of a Woman in Two Decades Amid Capital Punishment Debate
Google testing journalism AI. We are doing it already 2 years, and without Google biased propoganda and manipulated censorship
Unlike illegal imigrants coming by boats - US Citizens Will Need Visa To Travel To Europe in 2024
Musk announces Twitter name and logo change to X.com
The politician and the journalist lost control and started fighting on live broadcast.
The future of sports
Unveiling the Black Hole: The Mysterious Fate of EU's Aid to Ukraine
Farewell to a Music Titan: Tony Bennett, Renowned Jazz and Pop Vocalist, Passes Away at 96
Alarming Behavior Among Florida's Sharks Raises Concerns Over Possible Cocaine Exposure
Transgender Exclusion in Miss Italy Stirs Controversy Amidst Changing Global Beauty Pageant Landscape
Joe Biden admitted, in his own words, that he delivered what he promised in exchange for the $10 million bribe he received from the Ukraine Oil Company.
Swedish Embassy in Baghdad Engulfed in Flames Amidst a Firestorm of Protests
TikTok Takes On Spotify And Apple, Launches Own Music Service
Global Trend: Using Anti-Fake News Laws as Censorship Tools - A Deep Dive into Tunisia's Scenario
Arresting Putin During South African Visit Would Equate to War Declaration, Asserts President Ramaphosa
Hacktivist Collective Anonymous Launches 'Project Disclosure' to Unearth Information on UFOs and ETIs
Typo sends millions of US military emails to Russian ally Mali
Server Arrested For Theft After Refusing To Pay A Table's $100 Restaurant Bill When They Dined & Dashed
The Changing Face of Europe: How Mass Migration is Reshaping the Political Landscape
China Urges EU to Clarify Strategic Partnership Amid Trade Tensions
Europe is boiling: Extreme Weather Conditions Prevail Across the Continent
The Last Pour: Anchor Brewing, America's Pioneer Craft Brewer, Closes After 127 Years
Democracy not: EU's Digital Commissioner Considers Shutting Down Social Media Platforms Amid Social Unrest
Sarah Silverman and Renowned Authors Lodge Copyright Infringement Case Against OpenAI and Meta
Why Do Tech Executives Support Kennedy Jr.?
The New York Times Announces Closure of its Sports Section in Favor of The Athletic
BBC Anchor Huw Edwards Hospitalized Amid Child Sex Abuse Allegations, Family Confirms
Florida Attorney General requests Meta CEO's testimony on company's platforms' alleged facilitation of illicit activities
The Distorted Mirror of actual approval ratings: Examining the True Threat to Democracy Beyond the Persona of Putin
40,000 child slaves in Congo are forced to work in cobalt mines so we can drive electric cars.
A Swift Disappointment: Why Is Taylor Swift Bypassing Canada on Her Global Tour?
Historic Moment: Edgars Rinkevics, EU's First Openly Gay Head of State, Takes Office as Latvia's President
An Ominous Shift in Warfare: Western Powers Risk War Crimes and Violate International Norms with Cluster Bomb Supply to Ukraine
Bye bye democracy, human rights, freedom: French Cops Can Now Secretly Activate Phone Cameras, Microphones And GPS To Spy On Citizens
The Poor Man With Money, Mark Zuckerberg, Unveils Twitter Replica with Heavy-Handed Censorship: A New Low in Innovation?
Unilever Plummets in a $2.5 Billion Free Fall, to begin with: A Reckoning for Misuse of Corporate Power Against National Interest
Beyond the Blame Game: The Need for Nuanced Perspectives on America's Complex Reality
Twitter Targets Meta: A Tangle of Trade Secrets and Copycat Culture
The Double-Edged Sword of AI: AI is linked to layoffs in industry that created it
US Sanctions on China's Chip Industry Backfire, Prompting Self-Inflicted Blowback
Meta Copy Twitter with New App, Threads
The New French Revolution
×