Trump Loses Epic Battle To Keep Finances Secret Despite ‘Bigs, Superbigs’
A congressional decision forcing trump to release years of tax returns is one more giant loss for trump and one small step for mankind.
The common schlump suffers from night sweats that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) will audit him and slap him with a hefty fine after it finds that the schlump should not have deducted the cost of new shoes as a business expense.
Meanwhile, the uber rich, like former president trump, skate around and stonewall the IRS, paying next to nothing because they know that the richest Americans, the “big” and “superbig,” won’t be audited because the IRS doesn’t have the resources for such complicated investigations and are “outgunned routinely” by the labyrinth of private lawyers and accountants.
Those were the comments by former IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig in testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee investigating the IRS mandatory audit program under trump. Rettig told committee members that the IRS does “not have the resources to go after the bigs or the superbigs, as we refer to them, and we get outgunned routinely in that space.”
The committee found that the IRS failed to conduct the mandatory audits of all but one year of trump’s tax returns. It is likely that many other “bigs” and “superbigs” also avoided federal audits because of a shortage of IRS investigators.
In its report, the committee said that the IRS should provide adequate staffing for a full and timely audit of the president and that the audit team should include two senior IRS agents, a partnership specialist, a foreign specialist, and a financial products specialist.
The mandatory audit of the former president was conducted, mostly, by one revenue agent. The individual tax return of trump included the activities of hundreds of related and pass-through entities, numerous schedules, foreign tax credits, and millions of dollars in net operating loss carry forwards.
“The revenue agent noted that the lack of resources was the reason for not pursuing certain issues on the former President’s returns,” the committee reported.
The chronic staff shortages that protect the wealthy is in contradiction to a 2016 op-ed by Rettig who defended trump’s decision not to release his tax returns and criticized a “wealth squad” within the IRS that targeted high-income individuals for audits.
Rettig had a history of misinforming. At his nomination in 2016, he was criticized for “for failing to disclose that he had a stake in two rental units in Hawaii at a Trump-branded hotel.” Instead, Rettig noted he had two properties described as a “Honolulu, Hawai’i residential rental property.”
Rettig had previously been challenged by the House committee. On July 2, 2019, the committee sued Rettig and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to enforce a subpoena and obtain six years of Trump’s tax returns. They wouldn’t budge and ultimately the Supreme Court ordered trump to turn over the tax returns.
In 2018, a New York Times investigation into trump’s tax returns revealed that despite his boasting to be a self-made billionaire, he had started his career with more than $400 million from his father, Fred Trump. On May 7, 2019, The New York Times revealed that trump’s tax returns showed more than a billion dollars in business losses with a decade in the red. The story also noted that an undocumented immigrant housekeeper from Costa Rica working at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, earned $26,792.90 and paid more in federal income taxes than trump did ($0) in 2011.
This week proved to be the end of a long and ultimately unsuccessful effort by trump and his sycophants to shield details of his real wealth and withhold the tax returns. A review of his lies regarding his income tax returns is true trumpian.
On April 10, 2019, Trump said “there’s no law whatsoever” requiring him to provide Congress his tax returns. While there is no law requiring a president to publicly release his tax returns, federal law of IRS Code section 6103(f) require trump’s or anyone else’s tax returns to be given to Congress if they request it. Every president since Richard Nixon has voluntarily released his tax returns annually, and since the 1970s, the IRS is supposed to automatically audit the tax returns of presidents and vice presidents. That happened in just one of trump’s years in office.
In 1924, Congress passed and President Calvin Coolidge signed the law which provided that the Congressional tax committees “shall have the right to call on the Secretary of the Treasury” for tax return information and that it “shall be [the Secretary’s] duty to furnish[] any data of any character contained in or shown by the returns.”
Congress’s calls for information for legislative and oversight functions started in 1924. Before 1924, the law permitted the inspection of individual tax returns by order of the President and under rules prescribed by the Treasury Secretary. As part of its investigation of alleged bribery of high-ranking federal officials in exchange for no-bid leases at the Teapot Dome oil field, the Senate sought from President Coolidge the tax returns of those allegedly involved. Coolidge initially resisted.
A Congressional committee sought tax return information in connection with an investigation of the Bureau of Internal Revenue, the IRS’s predecessor. Lawmakers were concerned whether Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon had improperly maintained ownership interests in the oil fields while at Treasury and whether the Bureau of Internal Revenue had given preferential treatment to Mellon and his businesses.
Despite the mandatory IRS audit requirement of sitting presidents, trump wasn’t audited until more than two years after he assumed the presidency. Trump filed two tax returns in 2017 and one in 2018, but only received his first audit while he was in office in 2019.
The House committee subpoenaed the trump returns on April 3, 2019. The administration’s refusal was predictable as those considering the request were three appointees nominated by trump, including Secretary of the Treasury Steven T. Mnuchin; IRS Commissioner Charles P. Rettig; and the IRS Chief Counsel, Michael Desmond.
Before he was elected president, trump made various and contradictory claims about his tax returns. In 1999, trump was considering running for president under the Reform Party, At the time, he said he “probably wouldn’t have a problem with” releasing his tax returns if he ran.
In April 2011, Trump was laying the early groundwork for his campaign when he said that when President Barack Obama produces “his birth certificate … I’d love to give my tax returns.” Obama’s birth certificate was released a week later. Trump responded that he would release his returns “at the appropriate time.”
The next year, Trump said GOP presidential candidate Mitt romney should divulge his tax returns by April 1, which, trump said, “historically is the time that everybody gives them.” Not seeing a presidential candidate’s tax returns would lead people to think there was “almost, like, something wrong. What’s wrong?” trump said.
In May 2014, Trump said in an interview, “If I decide to run for office, I’ll produce my tax returns, absolutely and I would love to do that.”
In February 2015, trump repeated his promise to divulge his tax returns and said, “I have no objection to certainly showing tax returns.”
Later that month, Trump said, “I will tell you upfront … I want to pay as little taxes as I can as a private person.” In May 2016, Trump said he tries “very hard to pay as little tax as possible.” Then later in the year, trump the candidate criticized corporate executives and “hedge fund guys” for paying zero or negligible taxes.
In a January 2016 interview, asked if he would release his returns, trump said, “we’ll be working that over in the next period of time, Chuck. Absolutely. … at the appropriate time, you’ll be very satisfied.” A month later, trump said he would release his tax returns “[p]robably over the next few months. They’re being worked on now.” And he soon added falsely that he could not release his tax returns because he was under audit.
In May 2016, trump said he would not release his tax returns before the November 2016 election, in part because “there’s nothing to learn from” his tax returns. He added in another interview that his tax rate is “none of your business.”
During the 2016 presidential debates, Democrat Hillary Clinton said that only a few years of Trump’s tax returns were publicly available, “and they showed he didn’t pay any federal income tax.” Trump’s answer. “That makes me smart.” A month before the election, the New York Times published the first page of trump’s state tax returns for 1995, revealing that he had declared a $916 million loss that year, which could have allowed him to pay no taxes at all for 18 subsequent years.
On Feb. 27, 2016, then-president trump tweeted that “I unfairly get audited by the I.R.S. almost every single year.” The House committee noted that files show that just one mandatory audit began between 2017 and 2020.
As president, trump said in May 2017 that he “might” release his tax returns after he had stepped down as president.
Trump’s aides were all down on his income tax return lies.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said that Congress is not “smart enough” to examine trump’s returns despite the fact that 10 members of Congress are accountants, including three Certified Public Accountants.
On April 7, 2019, trump’s acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, said Trump’s tax returns will “never” be released. Trump and Mulvaney said voters have no interest in the tax returns and that the issue had been “litigated” when trump was elected.
Trump spokesperson Kellyanne Conway said trump would not release the tax returns because “people didn’t care” about it. On Oct. 10, 2018, the White House Press Secretary Sanders said that trump and his wife, “filed their taxes on time and as always, they are automatically under audit, which the [P]resident thinks is extremely unfair.” Again, a lie.
The House committee found that trump paid zero in taxes in his last year in office, $558,000 in tax in 2019, $5.3 million in tax in 2018 and nothing again in 2017. Trump had $0 in taxable income in 2020, $3 million in taxable income in 2019, $23 million in 2018 and $0 again in 2017.
In 2015, Trump reported $105 million in business losses left over from more than $700 million in losses reported in 2009.
For 2020, Trump made more than $10.6 million in taxable interest. The same year, he reported a $15 million loss from his rental real estate properties and other ventures. His total income for 2020 was a $4.7 million loss.
In 2019, Trump reported $11.3 million made from interest and $16.5 million in losses incurred from his real estate businesses and other companies. His capital gains from that year totaled $9.26 million, putting him in the black for a total of $4.4 million. His tax liability for 2019 was reported at more than $558,000.
On June 16, 2021, the House committee requested tax returns and return information for the tax years 2015 through 2020. The committee sought trump’s individual income tax returns and returns of The Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust; DJT Holdings LLC; DJT Holdings Managing Member LLC; DTTM Operations LLC; DTTM Operations Managing Member Corp; LFB Acquisition Member Corp; LFB Acquisition LLC; and Lamington Farm Club, LLC d/b/a Trump National Golf Club — Bedminster.