In Defying the Odds, we discuss Trump's dishonesty and his record of disregarding the rule of law. Our next book, Divided We Stand, continues the discussion.
There is every reason to believe that -- among many other things -- he is a tax cheat.
For years, he claimed that he could not release his tax returns because he was under audit. He lied. Philip Bump at WP:
This month, more than seven years after Trump announced his presidential candidacy and nearly two years after he left office, a lengthy legal fight ended and the House Ways and Means Committee obtained copies of several years of Trump’s returns. On Tuesday evening, the committee voted to make those returns public.
It also released summary details gleaned from the returns in its possession, covering the years 2015 through 2020. The top-line numbers make clear why Trump wouldn’t have been eager to share his returns in 2016: the year before, he’d reported a $32 million loss. This contrasts a bit with the presentation that Trump is “in the business of making money,” as he said in 2015. Only once he became president did he start reporting non-negative income.
More interestingly, the committee also noted that the IRS didn’t complete legally mandated audits of Trump for his first two years in office, meaning 2017 and 2018. In 2019, an IRS whistleblower alleged that a political appointee from the Trump administration had attempted to interfere with that process. A copy of the whistleblower complaint was obtained by Ways and Means Chairman Richard E. Neal (D-Mass.) that July. A few months before, Neal had sent the IRS a request for information about Trump’s audits — at which point, the committee reported Tuesday, the required audits began.
The amount of income, deductions and taxes paid by or refunded to former President Donald Trump while serving in the White House was detailed in a new report released Tuesday night.
The report reveals that Trump on his federal tax returns declared negative income in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2020, and that he paid a total of $1,500 in income taxes for the years 2016 and 2017.
On their 2020 income tax returns, Trump and his wife Melania paid no federal income taxes and claimed a refund of $5.47 million, according to the report by the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation.
The report was posted online shortly after the Ways and Means Committee voted to make public redacted versions of Trump’s full income tax returns, and those of eight related business entities for the tax years 2015 through 2020.
