The US House of Representatives’ Ways and Means Committee released six years of former United States president Donald Trump’s tax returns.
US presidents are not bound to release their tax records but it has been a precedent to do so, but Donald Trump broke precedent when he ran and won the US presidential elections in 2016.
The release of the report ended his long-running effort to keep them a secret.
The Democrats released returns which spanned nearly 6,000 pages, including more than 2,700 pages of individual returns from Trump and former first lady Melania Trump and more than 3,000 pages from Trump’s businesses.
What do the tax returns reveal?
The tax returns revealed that Donald Trump’s businesses were not as successful as he claimed them to be.
The Democrats say his personal business interests and dealings matter because it was an important part of his brand when he announced his presidential campaign in 2016 as well as his reelection campaign in 2020.
According to a report by the Hillthe returns revealed that Trump is making money from investments and interest payments rather than from real estate businesses. His real estate businesses were marked down consistently in the red.
It also revealed that Donald Trump did not pay taxes in 2020, the last full year he was in office.
The returns are giving a clearer picture of Trump’s financial situation, underscoring how he’s making his money mostly from investments and interest payments rather than from real estate businesses, which are marked down consistently in the red.
Donald and Melania Trump paid $641,931 in federal income taxes in 2015, $750 in 2016 and 2017, $1m in 2018, $133,445 in 2019 and $0 in 2020, according to the Guardian.
Donald Trump reported having bank accounts in the UK, Ireland and China from 2015 to 2017. He reported a UK bank account in 2018.
The returns, according to the Hillalso reveal that Trump was making money from his inheritance.
The New York Times in a report revealed that Trump made gains worth nearly $26 million from the sale of a Brooklyn housing complex which he inherited from his father.
Donald Trump also claimed foreign tax credits for taxes paid on business ventures which included licensing arrangements for the use of his name on development projects and his golf courses in Scotland and Ireland, the Guardian revealed.
Trump fulfilled his campaign promise to give away his presidential salary to charities for the first three years of his tenure but reported zero contributions to charities during the final year of his tenure.
The reports also revealed that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) failed to audit the president during the first two years of his presidency.
It was also outlined that the IRS did not fail to do so in the case of current US President Joe Biden who was audited in 2020 and 2021.
Trump was angered by the release. He said the Democrats will divide the US with this release.
“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. The great USA divide will now grow far worse. The Radical Left Democrats have weaponized everything, but remember, that is a dangerous two-way street!” Trump said.
The Democratic chairman of the ways and means committee, Richard Neal, said that the president of the United States is no ordinary taxpayer.
“A president is no ordinary taxpayer. They hold power and influence unlike any other American. And with great power comes even greater responsibility,” Neal was quoted as saying by the Guardian.
Republicans have attacked the Democrats saying this was a public attack on the former president and overturns privacy protections guaranteed to an average American.
“Democrats have charged forward with an unprecedented decision to unleash a dangerous new political weapon that reaches far beyond the former president, overturning decades of privacy protections for average Americans that have existed since Watergate,” Texas Republican Kevin Brady was quoted as saying by the Hill.
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