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“The IRS failed to pursue mandatory audits of Donald Trump on a timely basis during his presidency, a congressional panel found on Tuesday… The 29-page report was published just hours after the committee voted along party lines to release Trump’s tax returns in the coming days.” AP News
Many on both sides are critical of the committee unilaterally releasing the returns:
“Why make the returns public? How does that help Congress figure out whether the IRS auditing process is working? How does it further the legitimate oversight goals of the committee? Answer: It doesn’t. It turns out the Republicans are right. (This may be the first time since the Civil War.) As they correctly noted, this is a politically motivated move to release information that might harm or embarrass the former president…
“If Congress thinks all presidents or presidential candidates should release their tax returns for public scrutiny — which I believe is a good idea — it should pass a law that mandates that going forward. It should not find circuitous, pretextual ways of going after particular presidents.”
Nicholas Goldberg, Los Angeles Times
“The fine print of [Committee Chairman Richard] Neal’s report acknowledges that five of Mr. Trump’s six individual returns since 2015 were selected for regular IRS examination. So were five of the six returns for his firm, DJT Holdings. By the way, the IRS Commissioner during Mr. Trump’s first year in office was John Koskinen, a holdover appointee of President Obama. The one ‘mandatory’ audit selection took place under Mr. Trump’s nominee, Commissioner Charles Rettig…
“Under the Neal Rule, the incoming GOP House could claim a ‘legislative’ need to release the tax returns of Hunter Biden, groups like Planned Parenthood, or progressive ‘dark money’ donors. Democrats have spent years justifying any action to get Mr. Trump, and releasing his tax returns is another wrecking ball to standards and norms. Democrats could come to regret it—and sooner than they think.”
Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal
Other opinions below.
“If Congress wants the public to have more information about presidential candidates’ finances, it could pass legislation making the FEC financial-disclosure reports more detailed, and with more narrow ranges for assessing the value of assets, etc. But your tax return reveals . . . well, almost everything: taxes paid and tax rate, deductions and credits claimed, charitable donations, debts claimed, offshore assets, and so on…
“Maybe the public is better off knowing that Bill Clinton’s itemized deductions assessed the fair market value of his used underwear that he donated to charity at two dollars per pair. But it’s reasonable, and not necessarily shady, for a presidential candidate to believe that some small details on their tax return don’t need to be revealed to the whole world…
“This whole time, Neal and congressional Democrats have insisted that [this] wasn’t a fishing expedition, and that they aimed to investigate whether the IRS handled presidential tax returns appropriately. They have their answer: The IRS wasn’t doing its duty. Mission accomplished. The details of Trump’s tax returns were never all that relevant to the question of whether the IRS was doing its job.”
Jim Geraghty, National Review
“The long and short of this is that Trump did absolutely nothing outside the bounds of the current tax system. One could argue the current tax system sucks and benefits the ultra-wealthy. I might even agree, but that’s not what we were promised. We were promised Russian collusion and reams of fraud. Where is it?…
“Now, hundreds of years of precedent have been broken, with a private citizen’s tax returns being seized and released by congressional partisans for no other reason than to embarrass them. There was no legitimate legislative or investigative role here. And they did that for what? To show us that Trump uses the tax code like every other businessman?”
Bonchie, RedState
"The audit [of Trump’s tax returns] was assigned mainly to one agent… The lone IRS employee had to review a return that included over 400 pass-through entities, numerous schedules, foreign tax credits and millions in carried-over losses from previous years… An internal IRS memo said Mr. Trump’s taxes were so complicated that ‘it is not possible to obtain the resources available to examine all potential issues.’…
“Alas, this problem is bigger than Mr. Trump. Former IRS commissioner Charles Rettig has testified the agency lacks the resources to closely scrutinize the filings of many people in Mr. Trump’s stratum. ‘We get outgunned routinely,’ he said. No American should be too big to audit. Fortunately, the Inflation Reduction Act provided $79 billion for IRS modernization, including expanded resources to wade through complex returns from high-income taxpayers.”
Editorial Board, Washington Post
“Most elected officials in the US are remarkably opaque about their finances and, perhaps more importantly, their financial interests… Members of Congress and their spouses should simply be banned from trading stocks while in office. Presidential contenders, supreme court nominees and justices, and anyone running for national office should release their tax returns…
“Every tax dollar that Trump maneuvered to keep in his own pocket is a dollar that was taken away from healthcare, support for veterans, public education and provisions for the ageing…
“This should be a moment to ask: what do we expect from our public officials? How can we close the many ethical loopholes our leaders are currently permitted to walk through? This is not a partisan position, and it will no doubt elicit bipartisan opposition – at least among those already in office, or hoping to be. But a desire for ethical behavior should transcend political affiliation. And it’s well past time we demanded it.”
Jill Filipovic, The Guardian
