House Committee Votes to Release Redacted Form of Trump's Taxes.

Regular Member Posts : 7317 Join date : 2014-07-29

12-10-2022

House committee votes to release redacted form
of Trump's taxes.

On Tuesday, the House Ways and Means Committee voted to release some of former President Donald Trump's tax information to the public, according to
The New York Times.

It remains unclear what exactly will be released by the committee.
Lawmakers agreed to redact sensitive identifying information about the former president, like his Social Security Number, but it remains unclear whether what will be released to the public is the raw tax return documents with sensitive information redacted, or a summary report that highlights particular information from those returns.

"Democrats have said they needed those records to assess an I.R.S. program that audits presidents," said the report. "Republicans have insisted that rationale was a pretext for a politically motivated fishing expedition. Even before the hearing, committee Republicans made their view clear, holding a news conference in front of a bright red sign that read, 'Dangerous new political weapon.'"

"While the public release of the documents will provide the most up-to-date information about Mr. Trump’s finances, much is already known," said the report.

"The New York Times in 2020 released findings of an investigation into Mr. Trump’s tax-return data covering more than two decades.
He paid no federal income taxes in 11 of 18 years that The Times examined;
he also reduced his tax bill with questionable measures, including a $72.9 million tax refund that, as of 2020, was the subject of an I.R.S. audit."

All of this comes as New York State has filed a $250 million civil suit against Trump, alleging extensive business fraud that deprived the state of tax revenue.

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Regular Member Posts : 7317 Join date : 2014-07-29

12-20-2022

IRS never audited Trump during first two years in White House despite policy of 'mandatory' audits for presidents

After the House Ways and Means Committee voted to release redacted information about former President Donald Trump's tax returns, the committee's Democrats revealed that the Internal Revenue Service never bothered auditing Trump for the first two years of his presidency.

As the New York Times reports, "House Democrats revealed that the materials they obtained showed that the IRS had failed to audit Mr. Trump’s tax filings during his first two years in office,
despite having a program that makes audits of sitting presidents mandatory."

Furthermore, they found that the IRS only started an audit of Trump's taxes in 2019, when House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-MA) delivered a formal request for them.

However, it seems that the audit of Trump's taxes was never completed.

John Koskinen, the former I.R.S. commissioner who served during the first year of Trump’s presidency, tells the Times that he had no involvement in the process to audit presidential taxes, although he did think it was strange that the IRS did not follow its own policy.

"It does seem to me to be a legitimate question, if the IRS had the responsibility and wasn’t auditing, what’s the explanation?" he said.

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Trump tax report does not prove he retained presidential salary
Daniel FUNKE, AFP USA
Thu, December 29, 2022 at 9:21 AM MST

After Congress released details on Donald Trump's taxes in December 2022, Democratic activists and groups claimed on social media that the report indicated the former US president did not donate his salary as he had promised. This is misleading; while the document includes wages Trump earned while in the White House, independent tax experts say it shows he gave that money away, and public records indicate he made contributions to federal agencies.

"BREAKING: Former President Trump’s tax returns don’t show that he actually donated his salary as President which he promised to do," said Erica Marsh, a former field organizer for President Joe Biden's campaign, in a December 22, 2022 tweet.

The post accumulated more than 13,000 shares and 61,000 likes. Similar claims have spread among liberal Facebook pages such as Occupy Democrats and The Other 98%.

"Trump's tax returns prove he didn't donate his presidential salary ONCE," says a December 26 post from the former group, citing a tweet from a self-described "Democratic activist."

On December 20, House Democrats released a report from the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) showing Trump paid $1.1 million in federal taxes in the middle two years of his presidency -- but almost nothing for the rest of his time in the White House.

The figures indicate that the 76-year-old mostly claimed significant deficits from 2015 to 2020. The House Ways and Means Committee voted to release all of Trump's tax returns from that period, ending a four-year battle between Democrats and the former president that eventually reached the Supreme Court.

US media reports say the forms will be made public December 30. The initial report from Congress does not support the claims circulating online.

Trump donated to federal agencies

Trump promised in 2015, during the first few months of his presidential campaign, that he would donate his salary if elected. A year later, he said he would "take $1 a year" to comply with the law, as the US Constitution requires presidents to be paid.

The report from the JCT, a nonpartisan congressional committee that conducts legislative research, shows Trump's annual wages were nearly $400,000 throughout his time in office. That lines up with the presidential salary that has been in place since 2001.

But Edward McCaffery, a tax law professor at the University of Southern California, told AFP it looks like Trump gave that money away. Daniel Shaviro, a taxation professor at the New York University School of Law, concurred.

"He reported charitable contributions for his years as president that were made in cash and that exceeded the amount of his presidential salary," Shaviro said in a December 28 email. "Also, since money is fungible, it really doesn't matter which money he contributed."

The report does not specify where the contributions went, and Shaviro noted Trump's actual tax returns "haven't been released yet." But for the majority of his presidency, Trump announced quarterly gifts of around $100,000.

In several cases, the Trump administration held public events with a check presented to federal agencies.

For example, Trump donated his 2017 salary to the National Park Service, the Department of Education, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Transportation, according to transcripts of White House press briefings at the time.

In 2018, it was the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Small Business Administration, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and the Department of Homeland Security. Some of the donations were used for specific projects.

The same pattern played out with other federal agencies until mid-2020, when Trump's White House stopped announcing such contributions, according to an investigation by the Washington Post and reports from other media outlets. It is unclear if he donated the last $220,000 of his salary.

AFP contacted Trump's office, the JCT and the House Ways and Means Committee for additional information, but responses were not forthcoming.

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Non-Partisan Facts: https://usafacts.org

House Committee Votes to Release Redacted Form of Trump's Taxes. 1Qk4U7p

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Great! So will I be able to buy a dozen eggs for less than five bucks now?

Posts : 2495 Join date : 2017-09-09

Wondering what happened here ... All the squaking for 5-6 years to get Trump's taxes, ... they finally get them and...*crickets*

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