House panel to release report on Trump tax returns

WASHINGTON » The Democraticcontrolled House Ways and Means Committee voted along party lines Tuesday to publicly release a report on Donald Trump’s tax returns, which the former president has long tried to shield.

Committee Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., said supporting materials will be released along with the report.

Texas Rep. Kevin Brady, the committee’s top Republican, raised concerns about privacy as the documents could contain information such as Social Security numbers.

The report could provide a fuller look into Trump’s personal and business finances, possibly revealing how much money he paid in taxes, what income he derived from foreign operations and whether his income was as large as the reputed multibillionaire has suggested.

The report comes after a yearslong battle that ultimately resulted in the Supreme Court clearing the way last month for the Treasury Department to send the returns to Congress.

The committee received six years of tax returns for Trump and some of his businesses.

Democrats are under pressure to act aggressively.

With just two weeks left until Republicans formally take control of the House, Tuesday’s meeting was an opportunity for Democrats to disclose whatever information they have gleaned on a figure who still shapes U.S. politics despite losing reelection in 2020.

What about privacy?

Republicans had railed against the release, arguing that it would set a dangerous precedent.

Before Tuesday’s meeting, Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, the committee’s top Republican, called any release of Trump’s tax records a “dangerous new political weapon” that “even Democrats will come to regret.”

“Our concern is not whether the president should have made his tax returns public, as is traditional, nor about the accuracy of his tax returns,” Brady said. “Our concern is that, if taken, this committee action will set a terrible precedent that unleashes a dangerous new political weapon that reaches far beyond the former president and overturns decades of privacy protections for average Americans that have existed since the Watergate reforms.”

Trump has long had a complicated relationship with his personal income taxes.

As a presidential candidate in 2016, he broke decades of precedent by refusing to release his tax forms to the public.

He bragged during a presidential debate that year that he was “smart” because he paid no federal taxes and later claimed he wouldn’t personally benefit from the 2017 tax cuts he signed into law that favored people with extreme wealth, asking Americans to simply take him at his word.

Tax records would have been a useful metric for judging his success in business.

The image of a savvy businessman was key to a political brand honed during his years as a tabloid magnet and star of “The Apprentice” television show. They also could reveal any financial obligations — including foreign debts — that could influence how he governed.

Previously known

But Americans were largely in the dark about Trump’s relationship with the IRS until October 2018 and September 2020, when The New York Times published two separate series based on leaked tax records.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning 2018 articles showed how Trump received a modern equivalent of at least $413 million from his father’s real estate holdings, with much of that money coming from what the Times called “tax dodges” in the 1990s. Trump sued the Times and his niece, Mary Trump, in 2021 for providing the records to the newspaper. In November, Mary Trump asked an appeals court to overturn a judge’s decision to reject her claims that her uncle and two of his siblings defrauded her of millions of dollars in a 2001 family settlement.

The 2020 articles showed that Trump paid just $750 in federal income taxes in 2017 and 2018. Trump paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the past 15 years because he generally lost more money than he made.

The articles exposed deep inequities in the U.S. tax code as Trump, a reputed multi-billionaire, paid little in federal income taxes. IRS figures indicate that the average tax filer paid roughly $12,200 in 2017, about 16 times more than the former president paid.