Donald Trump’s tax returns released by the House Committee

Six years of Donald Trump’s tax returns have been released in one of the last acts by House Democrats before they lose control of the chamber.

The House Ways and Means Committee announced that the returns were released Friday by posting them on their website, which can be downloaded here as Appendix E.

The public release of the tax returns follows years of legal battles that culminated in the Supreme Court, which finally ruled that the tax returns must be handed over to the Commission. The tax returns, covering the years 2015 to 2020, showed that he paid no tax in 2020, with losses and little income.

Rep. Richard Neal (DMA) noted that the release of the tax returns shed light on the behavior of the IRS, which was supposed to conduct mandatory reviews of the President’s tax returns. He said the committee felt the program had been “dormant” during Trump’s presidency.

“We now know that the first compulsory examination opened two years after his presidency. That same day that committee asked for his return,” Neal said earlier this month.

“We expected the IRS to expand the mandatory screening program to reflect the complex nature of the former president’s financial situation, but found no evidence of this.” This is a major failure of the IRS under the previous administration and certainly not what we were hoping for.

But Trump’s taxes were an intrigue well outside the IRS’s audit guidelines. He broke with campaign tradition in 2016 by refusing to release his taxes, which only fueled speculation about the revelations they contained. The New York Times published a series based on leaked tax records showing Trump paid little federal income tax over the past 15 years despite huge losses.

Last week, the House committee released some findings from Trump’s filing, revealing that in the final review of Trump’s filing, agents discovered a number of issues that “warrant an investigation by the IRS.” Among them: “Whether loans to the former president’s children are loans or disguised gifts that could give rise to a gift tax.” The committee also said whether deductions of $126.5 million from DJT Holdings over a five-year period were “reasonable” as “it was not clear from the filing what DJT Holdings sold.” It also examined whether a loss carryforward of $105 million in 2015 and future years was “correct.”

There is more to come.