Former United States President Donald Trump's tax returns were made public, showing the Republican businessman's amount of income, deductions, and taxes paid by or refunded to him while serving in the White House, including $53 million in losses from 2015 to 2020.
The latest report reveals that Trump, on his federal tax returns, declared negative income in 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2020. It also showed that he paid a total of $1,500 in income taxes for the years 2016 and 2017.
Donald Trump's Tax Returns
In Trump and Melania Trump's 2020 income tax returns, the couple paid no federal income taxes and claimed a refund of $5.47 million. The Ways and Means Committee, prior to the posting of the report online, voted to make the former president's redacted full income tax returns. This includes eight related business entities for the tax years 2015 through 2020.
The committee released a separate report that revealed that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) began an audit of just one of the former president's tax returns while he was serving as the POTUS despite an internal policy that required sitting presidents to have their returns audited every year, as per CNBC.
The Joint Committee on Taxation staff's 39-page report gives a breakdown of the highlights of the former president's tax filings with his wife Melania during his term as president and the two years when he first ran for president.
The latest report identifies the different areas that the agency's staff thought warranted further examination by authorities. This includes documentation of nearly $506,000 in charitable donations claimed by the Trumps in 2019.
According to CNN, the report comes as the former president has repeatedly defied convention and refused to release his tax returns both as a presidential candidate and as a sitting president. The committee has long sought Trump's tax returns and said that its aim was to review "how the IRS enforces the federal tax laws against and ensures compliance by a president."
The IRS' Failure to Audit Properly
The committee also argued in its report that the IRS failed to properly audit the former president, saying that the agency was "dormant" during Trump's time in the White House. While there was only one audit of the former president, another was supposedly opened in 2015 but was not labeled as mandatory.
The report asserts that despite knowledge of an ongoing Congressional investigation and the Manual, the committee said that no priority was given to the mandatory audit program by the prior Administration.
The chair of the tax-writing committee in the Senate, Sen. Ron Wyden, on Wednesday said that the IRS was "asleep at the wheel, and the presidential audit program is broken." He said that there was no justification for the agency's failure to conduct the required presidential audits until a congressional inquiry was made.
One of the members of the committee, Democrat Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania, said after the vote of 24-16 on Tuesday evening to make public Trump's tax returns, that it was one of the most important votes he will ever cast as a member of Congress, BBC.
