Trump’s tax returns face automatic audit by IRS
Rule for presidents dates to Nixon administration
WASHINGTON For the average taxpayer, the odds of being audited by the Internal Revenue Service are just 0.7 percent.
But if you’re President Donald Trump, your chance of an audit rises to 100 percent.
It’s not just that his net worth and more than 500 partnerships make him a likely audit target under IRS policies designed to direct its enforcement efforts to the richest taxpayers. Under an obscure IRS rule, the tax returns of the president and vice president are automatically audited, every year, no exceptions.
That rule has been in place in one form or another since the Nixon administration, and it details the process for auditing presidential tax returns in minThorndike, ute detail — even down to the color of folder they must be kept in. not under audit,” said Rep. Joe Crowley, D-N.Y., during a debate in the House of Representatives last month.
But if Trump continues to use the audits as a reason to avoid releasing his returns, he can use that rationale for the remainder of his presidency. director of the Tax History Project and an editor for Tax Analysts.
“Can we trust the IRS to enforce the law against their boss? Putting it in the baldest terms, that’s really the question,” he said. “This is an important threshold we’re about to cross.”
Indeed, the mandatory audits come out of a largely forgotten Nixon scandal, when it appeared that tax problems — not the break-in at the Watergate hotel — were most likely to bring down his presidency. Nixon had claimed a $576,000 deduction by donating his vice presidential papers back to the government. Nixon invited the Joint Committee on Taxation to examine his returns, which led to $476,451 in back taxes and interest.
Since then, most presidents have released their tax returns shortly after filing them — usually on the Friday night before April 15.
Trump hasn’t said whether he’ll release his returns this year.