The House Ways and Means Committee voted on party lines Tuesday to release six years of the former president's tax returns. The returns will cover the period between 2015 and 2021, the years Trump was running for president and serving in the White House, according to panel members. The returns are to be redacted to remove information like Social Security and bank account numbers and released in several days.
Hours later, a report released by the panel’s Democratic majority said the IRS didn't follow its own policy because it didn't audit Trump during his first two years in office.
An accompanying report released by Congress’ nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation also found repeated faults with the IRS’s approach to auditing Trump and his companies.
The reports released Tuesday renew one of the biggest questions that's surrounded Trump, says The Associated Press: Why did he abandon the post-Watergate tradition of White House hopefuls releasing their tax returns?
Trump and those around him consistently have said IRS audits prevented him from doing so. There aren’t any laws that would have barred Trump from voluntarily releasing his returns even if they were being audited, AP says.
In response to the report findings, the Ways and Means Committee is proposing legislation to beef up the IRS’ approach, requiring an initial report no later than 90 days after the filing of a president’s tax returns. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says the House will “move swiftly” to advance the legislation.
Democrats say the IRS is ill-equipped to audit high-income, complex tax returns and instead targets filers in lower-income brackets — something the lawmakers have tried to remedy in their work on the panel.
“Because of the dismantling of funding to the IRS, they have not been unable to do their job,” says Rep. Steven Horsford, D-Nev.
Republicans have vowed to cut recent increased funding for more IRS agents. It's the first bill they'll consider when they take over the House majority in less than two weeks, says AP.
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