Former President Donald Trump’s tax returns have finally been released. Turns out he paid $0 in taxes in the last year of his presidency and he reported a loss of $4.8 million in 2020.
The House of Representatives’ Ways and Means Committee, led by the Democrats until January, voted 24-16 to release some materials from Trump’s tax returns to the public. The vote came after a legal battle that has been going on since 2016, with the Committee jumping through hoops to get a hold of the tax returns. The Committee revealed to the American public how the former president reduced his taxable income by reporting business losses several times.
US presidents are not required by law to release their tax returns, but for several decades they have done so voluntarily.
Now that the Committee has the returns, they will be released to the full House of Representatives, after redaction of personal information.
The report from the Committee detailed information about Donald and Melania Trump’s personal taxes and the returns of eight of Trump’s businesses from 2015-2020. The report was released online.
The tax returns show that Donald Trump and his wife, Melania, reported negative income (due to alleged losses) in 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2020 and that he paid a total of $1,500 in income taxes for the years 2016 and 2017.
In 2020, as COVID-19 was raging, Trump reported losses amounting to $4.69 million, which resulted in him paying $0 in 2020. He received a refund of $5.47 million.
The report released by the Committee also noted that Trump made numerous charitable donations in cash, and the Committee said that it will find out if the required proof was submitted for the cash contributions.
As noted, the Committee has been fighting to get the returns since 2016. Trump was resistant and said that he was under audit (which was untrue, except for the 2019 returns), and the IRS refused to hand over the documents, so the committee sued the Treasury Department, the IRS, and former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
At the last minute, the case went up to the US Supreme Court, and the justices recently ruled that they would not intervene, so the IRS was forced to hand over the returns, and they did, this week.
In spite of Trump’s assertions that he was under audit, the Committee’s report shows that the IRS did not audit the former president’s tax returns during his first two years in office, which is a requirement that dates back to 1977. Trump repeatedly said that when the audit was done, he would release his taxes to the Committee, but that promise was repeatedly postponed.
The Committee’s report indicates that the IRS will audit Trump in regard to a $72.9 million tax refund that he received due to reporting $700 million in losses in 2009. The tax returns released by the committee show that Trump continued to collect tax benefits from the 2009 losses for 10 more years until 2018.
Trump is facing several legal battles due to investigations about his conduct in the January 6, 2021 insurrection, and fraud questions are coming up because of the information revealed on his tax returns. Seemingly immune to his troubles, Trump recently announced that he would run for president again in 2024.
