The document dealing with Trump’s tax information is thousands of pages long. The U.S. House Tax Committee voted to release tax information last week.
17:42•Updated 20:28
A former president of the United States Donald Trump’s the committee that investigated tax matters has published Trump’s tax information on Friday.
Trump’s tax information has been reported by several American media, for example The New York Times (you are moving to another service).
Tax records document over 6,000 pages long and includes Trump’s private tax records, Trump’s wife Melania Trump tax information and tax information of business companies owned by Trump. Sensitive information has been removed from the documents before publication.
In November, a committee of the House of Representatives obtained Trump’s tax information for the years 2015-2020.
A document released Friday has revealed that Trump took big tax deductions and paid little federal income tax in the first and last years of his presidency, CNN (switch to another service) news.
According to the news agency AFP, Trump claimed that his companies made a loss. The tax records show that Trump made big losses before his election as president, which is why he didn’t pay much in taxes in the following years.
In 2015, Trump reported losses of $105 million and the following year, $73 million.
In his first year as president in 2017, Trump paid just $750 in taxes. Over the next two years, he paid a total of $1.1 million in taxes.
In 2020, it made a loss again and paid no income taxes at all.
The documentary also reveals that the US IRS had not checked Trump’s tax information regularly while he was president.
Back in December, a Democratic-dominated committee report accused the IRS of violating its own rules by failing to audit Trump’s information in three of the four years of his presidency.
No donations in the last presidential year
According to CNN, the tax returns also show that Trump had several bank accounts abroad while he was president, including in China from 2015 to 2017. The New York Times reported on Trump’s China account already last year, and at that time a representative of Trump’s company said that it was connected to Trump’s hotel business in the country.
The New York Times, on the other hand, says that tax data reveal that Trump did not give any money to charity in his last presidential year, 2020. As a presidential candidate, Trump had promised to donate the entire president’s annual salary of $400,000, and in the first three years the White House had told the destination of Trump’s money.
For years he fought to keep his tax returns secret
On Friday, Trump criticized the release of tax returns, calling it an abuse of power.
“Democrats should never have done this and the Supreme Court should never have accepted this, it will lead to terrible things for many people,” Trump said in his statement.
Trump was the first US presidential candidate in decades to not release his tax information during his election campaign or presidency.
Trump had also asked the Supreme Court to block the release of his tax information.
The US Supreme Court ruled at the end of November that it will not prevent a House of Representatives committee from examining the ex-president’s tax records.
The court’s reasoning states that federal law clearly states that the committee has the right to examine the tax records of anyone, including the president.
The committee had requested to see six years of tax records to determine whether Trump had followed tax laws.
Sources: AP, Reuters, AFP