Trump Lost His Last Chance To Keep His Taxes Hidden

When he was running for president in 2016, Trump promised to release his tax returns. He was LYING!Since being elected, he has done his best to keep his taxes a secret. He not only did not release his returns, but went to court to keep those returns from being released to a New York City Grand Jury (who was investigating both tax and insurance fraud).

When the District Attorney issued a subpoena for 8 years of Trump's taxes, Trump claimed that he was immune to subpoenas because he was president. That worked its way to the Supreme Court, where it was ruled that he was NOT immune.

Trump then claimed the subpoena was too broad and should be denied by a court. Lower courts ruled that was not the case, and it once again went to the Supreme Court.

On Monday, the Supreme Court, in a one-line opinion without any dissent, said it would not take the case. That allowed lower court rulings to stay in place, and now Trump's taxes must be turned over to the Grand Jury.

This does not immediately make those returns public, because Grand Jury proceedings are secret by law. But if charges are filed for Tax or insurance evasion, the returns would likely be used as evidence in court -- and that would make the returns public knowledge.

Trump gambled he would be able to keep his tax returns a secret, and even appointed Supreme Court justices that he hoped would back him on that. He lost that gamble.

Trump Is A Tax Cheat Or A Terrible Businessman (Or Both)

 

We now know why Trump so adamantly refused to release his tax returns (like candidates of both parties have done in the recent past). 

The New York Times got hold of multiple years of Trump's tax forms. It turns out that he didn't pay any income taxes in most years (and made no charitable contributions). In the couple of years that he did pay taxes, he only paid $750.

It turns out that nearly every worker in this country paid more in income taxes than Donald Trump. Even undocumented immigrants paid more than Trump!

The excuse he used was that he had lost money. That's hard to believe that he could lose money every year and still remain solvent. He's either the worst businessman in the country or the biggest tax cheater. Probably both.

The New York Times has a great article on Trump's tax returns and financial situation. I encourage you to read the entire article, but here's a small sample from it:

Donald J. Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes the year he won the presidency. In his first year in the White House, he paid another $750.

He had paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years — largely because he reported losing much more money than he made.

As the president wages a re-election campaign that polls say he is in danger of losing, his finances are under stress, beset by losses and hundreds of millions of dollars in debt coming due that he has personally guaranteed. Also hanging over him is a decade-long audit battle with the Internal Revenue Service over the legitimacy of a $72.9 million tax refund that he claimed, and received, after declaring huge losses. An adverse ruling could cost him more than $100 million.

The tax returns that Mr. Trump has long fought to keep private tell a story fundamentally different from the one he has sold to the American public. His reports to the I.R.S. portray a businessman who takes in hundreds of millions of dollars a year yet racks up chronic losses that he aggressively employs to avoid paying taxes. Now, with his financial challenges mounting, the records show that he depends more and more on making money from businesses that put him in potential and often direct conflict of interest with his job as president. . . .

Ultimately, Mr. Trump has been more successful playing a business mogul than being one in real life.

“The Apprentice,” along with the licensing and endorsement deals that flowed from his expanding celebrity, brought Mr. Trump a total of $427.4 million, The Times’s analysis of the records found. He invested much of that in a collection of businesses, mostly golf courses, that in the years since have steadily devoured cash — much as  the money he secretly received from his father financed a spree of quixotic overspending that led to his collapse in the early 1990s.

Indeed, his financial condition when he announced his run for president in 2015 lends some credence to the notion that his long-shot campaign was at least in part a gambit to reanimate the marketability of his name. . . .

The picture that perhaps emerges most starkly from the mountain of figures and tax schedules prepared by Mr. Trump’s accountants is of a businessman-president in a tightening financial vise.

Most of Mr. Trump’s core enterprises — from his constellation of golf courses to his conservative-magnet hotel in Washington — report losing millions, if not tens of millions, of dollars year after year.

His revenue from “The Apprentice” and from licensing deals is drying up, and several years ago he sold nearly all the stocks that now might have helped him plug holes in his struggling properties.

The tax audit looms.

And within the next four years, more than $300 million in loans — obligations for which he is personally responsible — will come due.

Against that backdrop, the records go much further toward revealing the actual and potential conflicts of interest created by Mr. Trump’s refusal to divest himself of his business interests while in the White House. His properties have become bazaars for collecting money directly from lobbyists, foreign officials and others seeking face time, access or favor; the records for the first time put precise dollar figures on those transactions.

Biden Released Tax Returns - Trump Is Still Hiding His

Joe Biden has released his tax returns for the last three years. The chart above shows the income that he and his wife reported, and the tax they paid on that income. If you want to see the actual tax returns, you can see them at Biden's website -- 2016, 2017, and 2018.

This is in line with what presidential candidates in the past have done -- except for one. Donald Trump has refused to release any of his tax returns. His excuse is that they are being audited. That's a pathetic excuse. Presidents in the past (like Nixon) released returns while they were being audited.

On Sunday morning, Trump's buddy blew that excuse out of the water though. He told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo that:

“They have no reason to believe that there is anything wrong with his tax returns. All these tax returns have by and large—maybe not the last one—but all of them have been audited, all of them have either been passed on or settled.”

I think everyone already knew the returns were not still being audited. Trump just refuses to release them -- even though he promised he would.

Trump has even gone as far as the Supreme Court to keep his tax returns secret. It brings up a valid question -- WHAT IS HE TRYING TO HIDE?

ALL Presidential Candidates Should Release Tax Returns

(This is from the new Public Policy Polling survey -- done on March 27th and 28th of a national sample of 846 registered voters, with a 3.4 point margin of error.)

Donald Trump promised to release his tax returns during the 2016 presidential campaign. He lied. It is now three years later, and he is still refusing to do that. He now claims the public is not interested in seeing his returns, but that is not true. As the chart above shows, about 57% of registered voters want him to release his tax returns, while 34% (about the size of his base) disagree.

But it's not just Trump that needs to release his/her tax returns. ALL presidential candidates of every party should release several years of their tax returns. I especially aim this at the Democratic candidates. How can we demand Trump's returns unless ALL of the Democrats (and Independent Bernie Sanders) have released their returns?

Here is part of an excellent op-ed by Helaine Olen in The Washington Post on this subject:

It has been more than a month since Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) told a national audience during a CNN town hallthat he would release 10 years of his personal taxes “soon,” adding, “We have to do just a few little more things.” Five weeks later, it seems those “little” things still aren’t done; he told CBS on Sunday that “we have it all done and it’s just a question of dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s.”

Enough with the excuses, Senator. These sorts of shenanigans — and make no mistake, that’s exactly what they are at this point — both reduce the pressure on cowardly congressional Democrats to pursue President Trump’s personal and corporate tax returns, and endanger Democrats’ hopes of taking back the presidency in 2020. The progressive positions that Sanders champions, including Medicare-for-all, expanded Social Security and increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour, are much too important to both the future of our country and our own personal finances to risk them over tax returns.

Trump broke with decades of precedent in refusing to make his tax returns public when he was running for president. The result? Not only don’t we know our president’s net worth, we also have little idea how he earned his fortune or how he makes his money now. Minus his paperwork, it’s hard to determine whether Trump is using the White House as a just-in-time moneymaking opportunity, violating the emoluments clause of the Constitution, and/or even paying his fair share of taxes at all.

There were hopes that a Democratic majority in the House would result in a subpoena of Trump’s taxes. But Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass), the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, who has the power to subpoena Trump’s taxes, is moving at a snail’s pace, to the point that any congressional-forced reveal of Trump’s returns might not happen until after the 2020 presidential election.

This is not helpful. Democrats need to be ratcheting up their attempts to get the president’s tax returns, not enabling his secrecy. And one way to up the pressure on Trump, not to mention laggards like Neal, is for the Democratic candidates — and I mean all Democratic candidates — to make their own IRS filings public so that they aren’t accused of rank hypocrisy for looking into the president’s finances.

None of this is to say there is definitely something amiss in Sanders’s taxes. He released his 2014 return during the 2016 Democratic presidential primary. It was, to use his words, “very boring,” revealing that Sanders both earns a salary and, as a septuagenarian, collects a Social Security check. But one year out of 10 isn’t good enough. Moreover, unless Sanders is undergoing a multiyear audit by the IRS, it’s highly unlikely that he’s putting any “finishing touches” on tax returns that were likely filed almost a decade ago. He’s probably not “dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s” on any years except, perhaps, 2017 and 2018.

Sanders, of course, is not alone. Beto O’Rourke hasn’t released his tax filings, though he says plans to release some returns “sooner rather than later." Neither has Pete Buttigieg or empowerment-guru-turned candidate Marianne Williamson. Others, including Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.), have released only portions of their taxes in the past. They are all in the wrong. But other Democratic hopefuls get it. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) released more than a decade’s worth of her personal tax returns Monday afternoon. She joined Sens. Elizabeth Warren, (D-Mass.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) as well as Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, all of whom have made several years of their personal returns available to the voting public. In fact, Warren, as part of her anti-corruption push, introduced legislation that would require the IRS to make public eight years of returns for all people running for president or vice president, in addition to all tax filings made while they held an elected federal office. (It would also make public two years of returns for all people running for the House or the Senate.)

Will We Finally Get To See Trump's Tax Returns?

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised to release his tax returns. His excuse for not releasing them immediately was that they were being audited. That was a BS excuse, since the IRS had no problem with him releasing them while they were being audited -- and he could have released the years that were not being audited.

After being elected, Trump refused to release those tax returns. He continued to claim they were being audited, and he added a couple more excuses.

He said the American people were not interested in his returns. The chart above shows that was just a lie. Every poll done since his election shows a majority wanting the release of those tax returns, and this latest poll (the ABC News / Washington Post Poll done between January 21st and 24th of a national sample of 1,001adults, with a 3.5 point margin of error) shows that 60% wants House Democrats to get those returns and release them to the public. Only 35% disagree.

He also said most people wouldn't understand the returns because they were so complicated. He seems to think the American people are stupid. They aren't. Most people know how to read a tax form, and I'm sure there are plenty of experts around that could explain them to even the dumbest people (the Trump supporters).

For the last two years, Trump has been able to get away with not releasing his tax returns. That's because both Houses of Congress were controlled by Republicans, and they were more interested in protecting Trump than learning the truth.

That has changed now. With the House solidly in control of Democrats, it is a foregone conclusion that those Democrats will ask for the Trump returns. And if Trump refuses (or his Treasury Secretary refuses to provide them), then the Democrats will go to the courts to force their release.

Will we finally get to see the Trump tax returns? Maybe. If we don't, it will be because the court fight lasted until the 2020 election and became a moot point after Trump lost the election.

Here's how Laura Davison and Andrew M. Harris describe the situation for Bloomberg Businessweek:

1. Why hasn’t Trump released his tax returns?

His most consistent explanation has been that, at the advice of his lawyers, he won’t do so while they are being audited by the Internal Revenue Service -- and that he has been audited constantly since 2004. On other occasions, he’s also said that there’s "nothing to learn from" his returns, that they are "extremely complex" so people "wouldn’t understand them," and that Americans who aren’t reporters don’t "care at all" about what’s in them. No law prevents him from releasing returns being audited by the IRS.

2. Why is the IRS auditing his tax returns?

For the returns he filed in the years before becoming president, there’s no way to know that -- or even to confirm that his returns really are under active audit. It’s true that an audit, once begun by the IRS, can take several years to complete, particularly for wealthy individuals like Trump with stakes in many business entities. So Trump could easily be under audit for the remainder of his presidency. (All presidents and vice presidents are audited annually during the years they are in office, but those audits are completed relatively quickly.)

3. Is he the only president not to share tax returns?

Over the last four decades, only Gerald Ford -- who became president in 1974, then ran unsuccessfully for a full term in 1976 -- also refused to release at least one of his annual tax returns, choosing instead to offer the public a summary of his tax data. Other presidents and presidential nominees have released one year’s worth (Republican Ronald Reagan) to 33 years’ worth (Republican Jeb Bush) of returns for the public to review.

4. What’s so interesting about Trump’s tax returns?

His unwillingness to release the documents has heightened speculation about what information about loans, business ties or his wealth they could contain. There are questions about what if any financial dealings he’s had with Russia, what conflicts of interest his business and political roles might pose, how philanthropic he is, how much Trump might benefit from the tax-cut plan he signed and, perhaps most directly, how much or how little he’s paid in taxes. (Glimpses into leaked tax information obtained by the New York Times showed Trump claimed operating losses of $916 million in 1995, which would have protected him for up to 18 years’ worth of taxes.) It’s by no means certain that Trump’s personal returns would answer any of those questions.

5. How might Trump be forced to release his returns?

As chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Congressman Richard Neal, a Massachusetts Democrat, can use a 1924 law to ask the U.S. Treasury secretary for the returns of any taxpayer -- including the president. (The Republicans who controlled Congress for most of the Trump presidency had this same power but showed no interest in using it.) Neal said he plans to make this request, pending discussions with his aides on the legal procedures to do so. With the returns in hand, the committee could then vote to release them -- or a summary of their findings -- to all 435 members of the House. That would effectively make the information contained in the returns, if not the returns themselves, public.

6. Would there be a fight?

Count on it. Republicans are prepared to say that Neal’s request is a political witch hunt, rather than legitimate government oversight. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin could ask the Democrats to re-submit any request with a stronger argument. Or Mnuchin could slow-walk the release of documents. Democrats are likely to sue if there is a delay, raising the prospect of a protracted legal battle that could potentially drag on to or even after the 2020 presidential election.

American Public Still Wants To See Trump's Tax Returns

A few days ago, the financial statements of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump were released. They showed the couple had made $82 million last year (while serving as employees of the Trump administration). That has made many start to wonder -- how much money did Donald Trump make, and how much of that was due to his being president.

The only real way for us to know about Trump's finances are for him to release his tax returns for the last few years. That would answer many questions about where his money comes from (and whether he is beholden to other countries).

Trump promised to release those returns when he was campaigning in 2016, but decided not to keep that promise after being elected. But the public still wants to see those returns. About 57% say he should release them, while only 35% say he should not. These percentages have remained steady since he took office.

The chart above uses information from a new Public Policy Polling survey -- done between June 8th and 10th of a national sample of 679 registered voters, with a margin of error of 3.8 points.

A Majority Still Wants To See Trump's Tax Returns

During the campaign, Donald Trump said he would release his tax returns once an audit was complete. Well, it's time to submit a new tax return and he's still refusing to release returns from previous years.

Trump says the public is not interested in seeing his returns -- but thousands of Americans hit the streets to demonstrate for the release of those returns this weekend. And three recent polls show that a majority of Americans still think the tax returns should be released. Those polls are the Public Policy Polling survey, the Bloomberg / Morning Consult Poll, and the CBS News Poll.

Trump had hoped this issue would go away once he was president, but that's not happening. And I don't think it will go away anytime soon.

Trump Breaks His Promise To Release His Tax Returns

With each passing day, we learn more and more that the promises Donald Trump made during his campaign were not real promises that he intended to keep. They were just statements designed to get him as many votes as possible -- statements that could easily be discarded once the election was over.

The latest broken promise from Trump regards the release of his tax returns. Every modern presidential candidate released their tax returns before the election. Trump did not. He said he couldn't release them because he was being audited -- and that as soon as the audit was over (or he was elected), he would release those tax returns. Most of us knew that was BS, because other candidates have released returns while being audited and the IRS said they had no problem with him releasing them.

Now everyone must realize that Trump never intended to release them. He was just telling a campaign lie (one of many).

An online petition was started at whitehouse.org asking him to release the returns -- and it got 200,000 signatures in just two days. President Obama always answered any petition that got 100,000 signatures, so Trump was shamed into answering the petition. But voters aren't going to like his answer.

The answer came from Trump aide Kellyanne Conway. She said on ABC's "This Week": That is

“The White House response is that he’s not going to release his tax return. We litigated this all through the election.”

“People didn’t care. They voted for him, and let me make this very clear: Most Americans are — are very focused on what their tax returns will look like while President Trump is in office, not what his look like.”

That is simply not true (an alternate fact?). Poll after poll has shown that most voters still want Trump to release the tax returns -- including a new ABC News / Washington Post Poll (done between January 12th and 15th of a random national sample of 1,005 adults, with a 3.5 point margin of error). That poll showed that nearly three-quarters of the public (74%) want the tax returns to be released -- including about half (49%) of Trump supporters and 69% of those living in red states. 

We need to get used to the idea that promises mean nothing to Donald Trump, and realize this is this the first of many more broken promises.

Clinton & Bush Released Tax Returns - Why Hasn't Trump?

Last Friday, Hillary Clinton released the last eight years worth of tax returns for her and her family. It shows that she and Bill earned about $141 million dollars (an adjusted gross income of $139.1 million) during that eight year period -- and they paid about $43 million in federal income taxes. Over the eight year period, that's an effective tax rate of about 31% (and an effective tax rate of 35.7% for just last year). They gave $15 million to charity over the eight year period.

Jeb Bush has also released tax returns -- for the last 33 years (although many of them were already public). Bush made $7.4 million in the last year, and over the 33 year period paid an average tax rate of about 36%. Like the Clinton's, he and his wife are multi-millionaires.

I don't have much of a gripe about the tax rates paid by both of these candidates. They both paid a far higher rate than middle income Americans, and the rate being less than the top rate can easily be accounted for by charitable deductions. It's far different than the 13% tax rate paid by Mitt Romney (on an income of more than $20 million a year).

The question I have is -- why hasn't Donald Trump released his tax returns for the last few years? He claims to be a serious candidate, and in fact, is leading in all the national polls. Isn't it time he revealed the tax rate he has been paying?

The only clue we have to his tax rate comes from his own lips, in an interview with CBS News back in 2011. At that time he claimed to be paying an effective tax rate of 17%. Is that the real figure? Is it even lower? Why won't he release the returns? Is he afraid he'll garner negative publicity (like Romney did in 2012) by admitting he's paying a lower effective rate than a middle income taxpayer?