The IRS Commissioner, Charles Rettig, is the man who stands between the Congressional and Trump tax returns.

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Rettig, 62, a seasoned tax lawyer in California, has spent more than 35 years representing taxpayers in litigation with federal and state tax agencies until his swearing in as Commissioner of Taxation. IRS last October.

This makes him the only person in Washington empowered to pass the President's personal tax returns under an obscure tax law – although Rettig claimed at hearings that the decision to comply with the claims of the Democrats, however, belonged to his boss, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. .
Trump refused to publish his statements, first as a candidate and then as president, breaking with the precedent that goes back to Watergate. And he stood up to this argument even after the House Ways and Means Committee Chair, Richard Neal of Massachusetts, officially asked Rettig to release six years of Trump's personal tax returns.
The last deadline is Monday, after Mnuchin has asked for more time to consult Justice lawyers.

Treasury and IRS spokespersons did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Rettig was not a traditional choice on the part of Trump to handle an underfunded bureaucracy with nearly 80,000 employees.

Previous commissioners of the last two decades have been chosen for their deep experience in business management. Rettig's predecessor, John Koskinen, who stepped down from his position in November 2017, spent two decades at the helm of Palmieri Co.'s management consulting firm. His predecessor, Douglas Shulman, appointed by George W. Bush, arrived at the Agency after being vice president of Finra, the self-regulator of the financial sector.

Instead, Rettig, Beverly Hills Lawyer, a graduate in economics from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and a law student at Pepperdine University, has devoted more than three decades of his career to representing wealthy taxpayers and businesses in complex conflicts.

The Democrats blamed him during his confirmation hearing in June for failing to reveal that he had interests in two rental properties in Hawaii at a Trump hotel. Citizens for Accountability and Ethics in Washington, known as CREW, picked up these links last week after disclosure documents revealed that Rettig had earned up to $ 1 million in revenue of leasing his brand properties related to Trump while he was under political pressure to release the President 's tax. results.

Rettig had previously noted the existence of these properties on his disclosure form, but did not specify that they were in a Trump brand hotel. Instead, he described them at the time as "a residential rental building in Honolulu, Hawaii," according to a memo from the committee staff obtained by CNN.

At the same June hearing, Democratic Senators also asked Rettig whether he would resist the White House's political pressures, as Democrats could demand the president's tax return if either chamber took control after the mid-term elections of 2018.

Rettig has promised to remain independent from the Trump White House during his five-year term, which expires in November 2022, and to sit "impartially, impartially". He renewed his promise not to give in to political pressure on senators by the same committee last month.

Today, Rettig's role following Neal's application regarding Trump's tax returns has been blurred by Mnuchin's intervention in the process, claiming that, as Rettig's boss, he was to oversee the decision. Mnuchin also separately asked the Department of Justice to look into the matter.

Democrats argue that authority rests solely with Rettig. They argue that the Treasury long ago delegated the responsibility for complying with Congressional demands made by the respective tax drafting committee officials to the IRS Commissioner. They also argue that any change would require notification to Congress, which did not happen.

"It's up to you and you alone to respond to President Neal's request," Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, the Senate's most democratic finance committee, told Rettig. An audition in April.

Rettig replied, "We are a Treasury office, we are supervised by the Treasury."

Until now, Mnuchin has intervened twice to respond to Democratic Congress demands to disclose Trump's tax returns, although they have sent their request to Rettig.

In his response, Mnuchin argued that the "unprecedented" demand raised "serious constitutional problems" that could have disastrous consequences for the privacy of taxpayers, and called for his supervision.

"This is a decision that has a huge precedent for potentially arming the IRS," Mnuchin told reporters in April on the sidelines of the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund in Washington.

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