Of Trump’s skimpier than skimpy tax returns

Former Prez Donald Trump’s tax returns were released last week by the House Ways and Means Committee

The released documents showed that he paid very little in income taxes spanning from 2015 to 2020, the last four years when he served as president.

Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court OK’d the congressional committee to receive copies of six years of Trump’s tax returns from the Treasury Department, despite Trump’s argument that the request was “politically motivated” and a “witch hunt.”

It should be noted that Trump is the only president to have refused to make his tax returns public during his two presidential campaigns. For at least 50 all men and women running for the White House have voluntarily disclosed the information.

Why all his reluctance to let people know about his finances and how much he paid in taxes?

The Trumpster answered that question during the 2016 presidential debate when he egotistically but weakly replied, “that makes me smart,” and argued that if he did, the money would be “squandered.”

Huh? It’s what we call a Fyou response.

Over the years, Trumped argued he couldn’t release financial documents while he was under a “routine audit” by the IRS.

But that was a whopper because there is no law or regulatory restriction preventing any citizen from releasing tax returns while under an IRS audit “routine” or otherwise.

According to a congressional report released earlier this month, Trump and his wife Melania “reported negative income and little tax liability during multiple years throughout 2015 to 2020, and paid no federal income tax in 2020,” Trump’s last year in office.

According to a report by the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation, “Trump used deductions to avoid paying taxes in some years, which should have been noted by the IRS. Trump reported massive business losses to offset his earnings and therefore reduce tax bills.”

The committee members also said they noticed that in many filings of reported streams of income, the former president’s earnings and expenses matched exactly or there was no reported income at all, indicating that he may have improperly deducted money spent for personal purchases as business expenses.

All of these findings support media reports from 2020 showing