The tax returns of former President Donald Trump have finally been made public, bringing to a close a contentious fight that lasted for the better part of six years and sought to obtain a deeper understanding of Trump’s financial situation.
Since Mr. Trump’s first foray into politics, his detractors have been eager to get him to demonstrate the actual form that his wealth takes. This is because Mr. Trump’s primary selling point to voters has been that his wealth protects him from the special interests and bribes that are typical of corrupt politicians.
He had been adamant in his refusal. The returns cover the period from 2015 all the way through 2020, which includes both Mr. Trump’s time as a candidate and his term as president.
The following is a rundown of the events that transpired prior to the revelations being made public on Friday.
Trump Goes Against the Grain
In the interest of both transparency and accountability, presidential aspirants and current officeholders have been required to reveal their tax returns to the general public for several decades.
According to Steve Rosenthal, a senior scholar at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, the long-standing tradition is “mostly about trying to ensure the public that the president is working free of conflicts and entanglements, and taxes are sort of the window into the financial soul of someone.”
In contrast, Mr. Trump “crashed all the norms,” according to Mr. Rosenthal, by refusing to submit his tax returns as a candidate when he stood for office in the 2016 presidential election. In that election, Mr. Trump was a contender for the position of president.
His adamant emphasis on the topic encouraged scrutiny and conjecture among his detractors that he had something to conceal; for example, could it be that Mr. Trump was not as wealthy as he claimed or that he had paid less tax than he should have?
In the meantime, his supporters defended his right to maintain his privacy. After all, the disclosure of a candidate’s tax returns is not mandated by any law and is therefore voluntary.
Investigations Conducted by the New York Times
The public, however, has gradually gained some insight into Mr. Trump’s personal tax history during the course of his presidency and subsequent years after he left office.
The New York Times conducted an investigation that won the Pulitzer Prize in 2020 and published its findings. As part of the inquiry, the newspaper got two decades’ worth of tax returns from Donald Trump that were filed before he was elected to office. The documents provided a level of visibility into Mr. Trump’s enterprises that had never been seen before.
They revealed that he paid very little or no federal income taxes during that time period and that Mr. Trump had reported in his tax filings that his businesses had lost significant amounts of money, despite his public boasts of financial success. This was despite the fact that Mr. Trump had been boasting publicly about his financial success. The New York Times claimed that Donald Trump paid only $750 (around £623) in federal income tax in 2017, despite the fact that he is a billionaire.
According to Mr. Rosenthal, the article in the New York Times “calls into doubt whether he is a billionaire or whether there is some gimmick he takes to avoid paying taxes, whether legal or not.”
Bringing the Fight All the Way Up to the Supreme Court
When the Democrats took control of the House of Representatives at the beginning of 2019, they immediately began exercising their newfound authority in order to exercise oversight over Mr. Trump’s administration.
The Ways and Means Committee fought tooth and nail for a period of three years in order to obtain Mr. Trump’s tax returns.
This battle was taken all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States this year. In November, the justices on the court decided not to prohibit the release of Mr. Trump’s tax returns to the committee, which opened the door for the returns to be made public.
The committee had a vote on December 21 to decide whether or not to make the tax returns that they had collected available to the public. The result was divided along party lines.
The publication of the tax documents on Friday comes just a few days before the Republicans are due to take control of the House of Representatives. This could indicate that any further investigation into Mr. Trump’s finances will be put on hold for the near future.
It is probable that investigations will be continued by the Senate of the United States, which is currently controlled by Democrats.
Political Chess or Regulatory Oversight?
The release of Mr. Trump’s tax returns has been criticised by both Mr. Trump and his Republican supporters in Congress, as opposed to Democrats, who have claimed that they are performing vital oversight functions.
Mr. Trump’s camp issued a statement to the Washington Post in which they referred to the planned publication as an “unprecedented leak by lame-duck Democrats.” They also issued a warning, saying that if “this injustice can happen to President Trump, it can happen to all Americans without cause.”
The publication, according to Republican Representative Kevin Brady of Texas, “unleashes a frightening new political weapon that stretches far beyond the former president.”
However, government ethics watchdogs stated that the requirement should be implemented for presidential candidates and public officials like Mr. Trump since it is necessary for the public to continue to have faith in their institutions and leaders.
According to Delaney Marsco, senior legal counsel for ethics at the Campaign Legal Center, a non-profit organization, “We can’t just have voters get cherry-picked information based on how open a politician is to sharing information.” “It’s a horrible system for the voter, and it’s a bad system for public trust,” many have said about the voting method.