Disclose Pa. candidate tax returns

Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidates aren’t required by law to release their tax returns, but candidates for the commonwealth’s highest office have done so for at least six campaigns dating back to the 1990s.

The practice of releasing returns began as an extension of what started on the federal level about four decades ago.

Since then, until the 2016 presidential election campaign, all major party presidential nominees opted to make public their returns in a commendable display of transparency.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump broke the string of access by refusing to release his, which didn’t deter him from being elected as commander-inchief.

However, many Americans still wonder what his refusal has kept hidden from public scrutiny.

Now, building upon Trump’s decision, the three announced Republican candidates vying for their party’s Keystone State gubernatorial nod have made it known that they too won’t release their returns.

According to the Associated Press, state Sen. Scott Wagner, who is described as prominent in the south-central Pennsylvania waste-hauling industry, has refused to say why he won’t release his tax return.

Likewise, the campaign of Paul Mango, a former health care systems consultant, has said that he would comply only with what is required of him — and, again, Pennsylvania law doesn’t require gubernatorial candidates to release their returns.

The other candidate, Laura Ellsworth, a commercial litigation lawyer, expressed the opinion that it’s “unreasonably intrusive” to be expected to release a tax return.

An Ellsworth campaign spokeswoman said Ellsworth believes that the expectation that tax returns be released “creates a disincentive” to run for office.

But that opinion runs counter to the legitimate belief that voters should have more than a name, campaign signs and campaign speeches, and interviews as a basis for judging a candidate.

Incumbent Democrat Tom Wolf, who is running for a second term this year, has said through his campaign that he will release the first two pages of his 2017 return and make available the rest of the return for inspection by reporters.

The three Republicans who will do battle against one another in the May 17 primary election balloting should follow his lead.

Despite Trump’s refusal, his running mate, then-Indiana governor and now Vice President Mike Pence, released 10 years of his tax returns in a laudable display of respecting voters’ right to know.

In Pennsylvania, candidates are required to file “statements of financial interest” with the state Ethics Commission.

Those statements list sources of income and enterprises in which a financial stake exists or to which the candidate owes money.

However, the statements don’t reveal how much income a candidate reports to the government and pays in taxes, nor how much he or she receives from each income source.

The AP also noted that tax returns reveal the effective tax rate that a person pays, whether the candidate has avoided paying taxes, how much the candidate has written off, and how much he or she gave to charities.

Ethics-in-government organizations back the idea of gubernatorial candidates releasing their returns, and a spokesman for one of those organizations stated correctly that the more powerful an office, the more scrutiny that a candidate should expect.

Despite no requirement, Pennsylvania’s three GOP gubernatorial hopefuls should rethink their current — unflattering — tax-return stances.