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President Donald Trump does not stop saying that he can not publish his tax returns because he is undergoing an audit – but this audit is in fact the only thing that can be done. one of the reasons the Democrats want to get his statements.
Trump has given many excuses as to why he will not publish his tax returns, a standard his predecessors have followed for 40 years. One of the explanations he uses most often is that he is audited. He resumed Wednesday after Representative Richard Neal (D-MA), who chaired the House Ways and Means Committee, formally asked the IRS to request Trump's tax returns in the last six months. years.
"Until I'm not audited, I will not do it, thanks," Trump said, according to Politico. He continued, "We are under audit, despite what people have said, and we are working on it."
However, being audited does not prevent Trump from publishing its tax returns – it could use them anyway. There is also a precedent in which a president released his tax returns when he was audited – Richard Nixon did. In addition, part of what Democrats are trying to do to request Trump's tax returns is whether the IRS looks at them properly.
The IRS Administration Manual provides guidelines for the processing of the President's and Vice-President's tax returns and indicates that they are subject to "mandatory examinations" by the agency. The IRS is not legally obliged to verify the statements but is supposed to do so. What we do not know is if we do not consider these indications or if we probe the amount.
Neal pointed this out in his letter to Commissioner Charles Rettig of the IRS on Wednesday, explaining that one of the purposes of his request was to monitor "how well the IRS verifies and enforces federal tax laws. against a president ".
"The IRS's policy is to audit the tax returns of all presidents and vice-presidents sitting, but little is known about the effectiveness of the law," Neal said in a statement.
It is unclear whether Trump's pre-presidential tax returns are verified, and his statements could be false. But the statements 2017 and 2018, if the IRS follows its own procedures, are supposed to be verified.
An IRS spokesman did not return a request for comment on Neal's application.
We already know what the IRS Commissioner is thinking about Trump's tax returns.
The IRS Commissioner is appointed by the President, which means that Trump has appealed to Rettig for the work that he currently holds. Part of what the Democrats want to know is whether, as a political candidate, he is impartial in his work.
"Is the IRS able to audit the president? That's a legitimate question, "said Joseph Thorndike, a tax historian and director of the Tax History Project, when he spoke about Trump's tax filing application process earlier this year.
We actually have an idea of what Rettig thinks about Trump's tax returns, including whether he should publish them during an audit. The long-time tax attorney wrote for Forbes in 2016 that he would not advise Trump to publish his statements.
"Is there a legal hurdle preventing Trump from filing tax returns? Absolutely not, "Rettig wrote. "Would an experienced tax lawyer representing Trump in an IRS audit advise him to publish his tax returns at the audit? Absolutely not."
We do not know if Trump is being audited – the IRS could not review his presidential income tax returns, and he could be lying about his current presidential income tax returns. of verification. At a Congressional hearing held in February, Trump's former lawyer, Michael Cohen, had stated that he did not believe Trump was audited. In fact, Cohen said that what made Trump nervous was the idea that publishing his reports as previous candidates would do it. quick additional examination of the IRS.
"What he did not want, is that a whole group of think tanks, who are tax experts, review his tax return and start shredding it." It will eventually be subject to audit and it will eventually have taxable consequences. , penalties, etc. "said Cohen.
If Trump's returns are actually audited – whether pre-term or after-term – they are probably being probed by the IRS's "wealth brigade", a specialized group that is supposed to audit wealthy taxpayers, which Trump claims. At Forbes, Rettig explained the process followed by the Wealth Squad, which means that in theory, if Trump's statements are audited, he knows what to do. He also put forward the hypothesis of what could be in the statements:
So, what's in Trump's returns? Probable information was prepared by many highly qualified tax experts who were fully aware that the general public might be reviewing the returns at a later date. It is unlikely that a precise overall financial picture will appear simply by examining its statements. It probably pays taxes at a lower rate than many of us, given the nature of its real estate holdings and similar investments, subject to lower tax rates than the wages collected by the rest of us. His tax specialists certainly did not advise him to pay his taxes in excess.
The IRS could conduct a fair and complete audit of Trump's tax returns while he was president, before he was president, or not at all. That's part of what the Democrats are trying to discover. So, when the White House gives the excuse that it does not publish Trump's tax returns because of the audit, it could perhaps inadvertently help the Democrats defend their cause.
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