Stand up & demand Trump’s tax returns
On Saturday, you have the opportunity to make Congress do the right thing — by releasing many years of President Trump’s complete federal income tax returns. Congress has the legal power to do this, but won’t unless enormous numbers of other Americans, the vast majority of whom say Trump owes it to us to show his returns, demand it.
Your first opportunity to make Congress do the right thing is to join one of the marches and rallies scheduled worldwide on April 15, which is traditionally known in America as Tax Day.
Better, organize family, friends, co-workers and neighbors to join you. You can help make our streets swell with Americans exercising their First Amendment rights to assemble peaceably and petition the government for a redress of grievances.
At least 160 marches and rallies will be held around the world. In New York, Chicago, San Francisco and 20 other places, events will feature Trump chickens made in China. These inflatable snow-white roosters with Trumpian gold combs and wattles flew to America by jet thanks to author Danelle Morton, a march organizer.
Without complete tax returns going back several decades, we have no way of knowing how much Trump depends on Russian oligarchs and Middle East potentates for his huge income — or how vulnerable he is to being squeezed to repay loans to banks owned by the Communist Chinese government in Beijing.
We have no way of knowing which deductions, exemptions and loopholes he depends upon, which is critical to understand as he and Republicans get set to rejigger to the tax code.
We also have no way of knowing if he is a tax cheat, though evidence from his 1984 income tax returns and a 1983 sales-tax scandal suggests he may be.
Trump filed New York City and State tax returns in 1984, claiming more than $600,000 in business expenses for a consulting business with zero income. He then appealed the denial of these deductions.
At trial, his lawyer, Jack Mitnick, testified that while his signature was on the returns — significantly, only a photocopy existed — neither he nor his firm prepared it. Who did, then?
Trump admitted to sales-tax cheating in 1983 after he bought more than $65,000 of jewelry at Bulgari, across the street from newly open Trump Tower, and having empty boxes sent to a Connecticut address so he could evade more than $4,000 of taxes.
Trump says he can’t release his returns because he is under audit. Balderdash.
During Watergate, President Richard Nixon released his returns, which were under audit. Nixon said that “people have got to know whether or not their President is a crook.”
As it turned out, Nixon was a tax crook. While he was not prosecuted, his tax lawyer went to prison for backdating documents to take fraudulent tax deductions.
Huge turnouts Saturday will tell Congress that those who side with Trump on tax secrecy should fear being voted out in 2018.
Though taxes in general are confidential, Congress has long had the explicit legal authority to examine Trump’s tax returns — through the Joint Committee on Taxation — and make its findings public.
But neither Democrats or Republicans will risk Trump’s the wrath, and that of his most dedicated supporters, unless millions of voters demand it.
When voters demanded tax reform in 1969, they got it. The revelation that 155 rich families paid no income taxes prompted more letters to Congress that year than the Vietnam War. Congress quickly passed a law to make sure rich investors paid some tax. Sadly, President Ronald Reagan signed a 1986 law repealing and replacing it with something much worse that hit families instead of rich investors.
You can make Congress act today, just as in 1969, but only if you and many others exercise your rights — your duties — as a citizen.
Let’s peacefully fill the streets from sidewalk to sidewalk. Don’t be cynical. Show up. The New York City rally and march begins at 1 p.m. Saturday at Bryant Park, Sixth Ave. at 42nd St.
March on Tax Day, and Congress may pay attention. Stay home, and they’ll do nothing.