US lawmakers voted Tuesday to release the tax returns of former Republican President Donald Trump, who fought a years-long legal battle to keep them private.
Whoever is embarking on a new race for the White House for 2024 had not made his tax declarations known, unlike all his predecessors since the 1970s. Donald Trump will have done everything to keep them secret. Until an appeal to the Supreme Court which finally ruled against him after a legal battle lasting several years to keep these private documents.
In one of its last decisions before the change of majority, the House of Representatives will therefore publish the documents relating to the years 2015 to 2020, in other words the years when Donald Trump was in the White House. This is reported by our correspondent in Washington, Guillaume Naudin. This applies to his personal statements and those of several of his companies. The exact date of publication is not yet known.
The lack of transparency of Donald Trump, who has made his wealth a campaign argument, has fueled speculation for years about the extent of his fortune or potential conflicts of interest. His family business, the Trump Organization, was convicted in early December of financial and tax fraud after a trial in New York where the former Republican president was not tried.
Tens of millions of dollars in tax deductions and credits
As the elements concerning the private life of the 45th president will have to be removed, this will take a little time, but we already know that the members of the commission are surprised that the American tax authorities have passed, contrary to custom, and contrary to the assertions of the person concerned, to launch an audit of his declarations during the first two years of his mandate.
Texas Democratic Representative Lloyd Dogget says Donald Trump was able to benefit from tens of millions of dollars in deductions and other tax credits without any real justification. The press had already revealed that he had not paid income tax for ten years. When Hillary Clinton pointed this out to him during a 2016 debate, Donald Trump retorted that it made him smart.
(And with AFP)