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(Trends Wide) — The Democratic-led House Ways and Means Committee said Tuesday it would release former President Donald Trump’s tax returns within days, saying the IRS failed to properly audit the former president’s taxes while in office.
The panel also released a report Tuesday detailing the former president’s tax returns for six years, including his claims of huge annual losses that significantly reduced his tax burden.
Chairman Richard Neal and his fellow Democrats said Tuesday that the records they obtained showed the presidential audit program did not work as expected. The Massachusetts Democrat charged that the required audit of Trump’s taxes “did not happen,” as his returns were only subject to the mandatory audit once, in 2019, after consultation with Democrats.
“The investigation that was done in connection with the mandatory audit program was non-existent,” Neal told reporters after the commission hearing.
The panel also released a supplemental report from the Joint Commission on Taxation that included details about Trump’s tax returns from 2015 to 2020, ahead of the scheduled release of the returns themselves.
Those underlying documents, however, will first need to be heavily edited.
The release of Trump’s tax returns marks the conclusion of a nearly four-year legal battle House Democrats waged against the former president after they took control of the chamber in 2019.
The audit program was important to Democrats because it was the justification they often got the returns in the first place, but the Democratic pursuit was also tied in part to long-standing suspicions about Trump’s taxes after he failed to release his returns while was running for president in 2016 or once in office.
The commission also made legislative recommendations to strengthen the presidential audit program, including new requirements “for the mandatory examination of the president with disclosure of certain audit information and related statements in a timely manner.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Tuesday night that the house would “act quickly” to advance the legislation, even though Congress is days away from adjournment.
In a separate report, the Joint Commission on Taxation offered a summary of its review of tax returns between 2015 and 2020 for Trump and several of his companies. The JCT noted in its report that it had no investigative power: it could not demand documents from Trump or his businesses or interview IRS agents assigned to audits of Trump, so the commission did not issue an opinion on whether Trump should have paid more or less taxes.
