USA : Donald Trump - Supreme Court clears Democrat congressional committee to see tax returns

General Chat In The News
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The US Supreme Court has cleared the way for ex-President Donald Trump’s tax forms to be released to a Democratic-controlled congressional committee. The justices rejected Mr Trump’s bid in October to block a lower court’s ruling that granted the panel’s request for his financial records.

The move is a blow to Mr Trump, who has for years kept his returns sealed. He criticised the decision on Wednesday and said the Supreme Court had “lost its honour”.

Mr Trump became the first president in 40 years not to release his taxes after announcing his first presidential run. The House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee has been seeking access to his records since 2019.

The decision means the US treasury department can deliver the tax returns from 2015-20 for Mr Trump and some of his businesses to the Democratic-controlled committee.

It comes just before the Republicans take control of the House after this month’s midterm elections.

Will there be leaks … :question:

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In typical fashion, Trump lashed out at the Justices of the Supreme Court, even though he appointed 3 of them.

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That sneaky bum fart won’t have a problem. He has had long enough to get his financial team working on disguising and hiding any illegal carrying on’s. He can bleat all he wants, it’s all a smoke screen and delay tactics.

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A committee in the US House of Representatives has voted to make public six years of Donald Trump’s tax returns.

The move caps a nearly four-year legal battle by Democrats to obtain the documents, which was ultimately decided by the US Supreme Court last month.

US presidents are not required by law to release their tax returns, but for decades they have done so voluntarily. The former president has fought hard to shield his tax returns.

The US House Ways and Means Committee voted 24-16 on Tuesday evening to publish the documents, with all Democrats on the panel in favour and all Republicans opposed.

It is unclear when the public will see the financial documents which stem from 2015-20, when Mr Trump was running for president and serving in the White House.

In 2016, Mr Trump became the first major-party presidential nominee since Richard Nixon in 1972 to decline to publicly release his tax returns while campaigning for office. At the time, he said he would do so after an Internal Revenue Service audit had concluded.

However, on Tuesday Democrats on the panel said that Mr Trump was not actually under an audit in 2016, and that the Internal Revenue Service did not begin their official audit until 2019.

Some time soon … maybe … :069:

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Presumably since the Democrats have seen the returns and felt it was important enough to vote on it, it’s not just a routine tax return. It will be anticlimactic if there is nothing of interest in the returns.

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The amount of income, deductions and taxes paid by or refunded to former President Donald Trump while serving in the White House was detailed in a new report released Tuesday night.

Those full returns are expected to be released in the coming days.

A separate report released by the Ways and Means committee revealed that the IRS had started an audit of just one of Trump’s tax returns while he was serving as president despite an internal policy mandating that sitting presidents have their returns audited annually.

The 39-page report by the Joint Committee on Taxation staff gives a breakdown of the highlights of Trump’s joint tax filings with Melania during his time in office, and the two years he first ran for president.

The report identifies different areas that the staff thought warranted further examination, such as documentation of nearly $506,000 in charitable donations claimed by the Trumps in 2019.

Highlights of the report include:

  • On their 2015 federal return, Trump and his wife declared negative income of $31.7 million, with taxable income of $0. The couple paid federal income taxes of $641,931.
  • The 2016 return declared negative income of $31.2 million, with zero dollars of taxable income. The Trumps paid $750 in taxes.
  • The 2017 return declared negative income $12.8 million, with $0 in taxable income. The couple paid $750 in taxes.
  • The 2018 return declared total income of $24.4 million, with taxable income of $22.9 million. The Trumps paid $999,466 in taxes.
  • In 2019, the Trumps declared $4.44 million in total income, and $2.97 million in taxable income. They paid $133,445 in taxes.
  • The 2020 return shows negative income of $4.69 million, with zero dollars in taxable income. The tax paid was $0 and they claimed a refund of $5.47 million.

Now call me Mr Suspicious but I think that there’s some creative accounting involved in calculating those figures … :thinking:

:rofl:

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How can someone claim.a refund of 5+ million when they haven’t actually paid that much tax in the first place?

What’s worrying about all of this is that there still might be enough people willing to make him a viable candidate and possibly elect him in a couple of years. What is going through their minds??

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The only years he’s showing income are the years he was President. That’s backwards. He shouldn’t have been making money then. He said he gave his salary away. And he left others to run his business. Where did that money come from?

Lots of questions.

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Indeed … I’ll bet that Trump has lots of answers … and every one a lie … :roll_eyes:

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Since some of his organizations have been indicted for tax fraud, who is going to answer the questions? I doubt Trump knows any of the answers.

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The two Trump Organization companies, called the Trump Corporation and Trump Payroll Corporation, were indicted in July 2021, along with the company’s longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, and accused of using a variety of methods to reduce payroll liability from executive salaries through untaxed bonuses and luxury perks worth millions.

Weisselberg pleaded guilty in August and agreed to testify against the company as part of a deal with prosecutors. He is expected to face a five-month jail sentence.

Former President Donald Trump was not charged in the case, but Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has said Trump remains under investigation. The office’s probe began in 2018 under Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus Vance Jr. The investigation initially targeted hush-money payments made by former Trump lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen during the 2016 presidential campaign to adult film star Stormy Daniels, but later widened to include the corporate tax fraud charges.

Cohen was rarely mentioned during the trial, but Trump’s name was invoked frequently by both sides.

Weisselberg spent several days on the stand testifying about the tax schemes. He and two witnesses who received immunity during prior grand jury proceedings — current company controller Jeffrey McConney and outside accountant Donald Bender — described a series of methods used by Trump Organization executives to avoid taxes, and payroll liability, on large bonuses and luxury benefits.

Jurors were told about an internal “clean up” conducted in 2017 at the Trump Organization after Trump became president. The company hired an outside lawyer to examine its tax practices. Her review led the company to cease many of the practices that led to these criminal charges, multiple witnesses testified.

Prosecutors said Weisselberg was one of several executives who received large annual bonus checks, signed by Trump and logged as if they were payments to independent contractors, and luxury perks such as high-end apartments, private school tuition and cars that were not reported as salary.

And Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass said during his closing argument that Trump knew about it.

The Trump Organization could face up to $1.6 million in fines. Sentencing is expected to take place on Jan. 13, 2023.

The probable sentences seem remarkably lenient, considering the extent of the crimes and the expense of the investigation and trial … :slightly_frowning_face:

Nevertheless, a loss for Trump … :slightly_smiling_face:

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Doesn’t seem to have affected him at all. This was in the news in early December. All the sources I heard were very careful to say that this was his organizations but not him. I don’t see the difference if he knew about it.

That’s the thing with Trump. It’s hard to pin a loss on him.

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