Trump tax returns: House committee receives Donald Trump’s federal tax returns from IRS



CNN

The House Ways and Means Committee now has six years of Donald Trump’s federal tax returns, ending a year-long lawsuit by Democrats to dig into one of Trump’s most closely guarded personal details. former president.

“Treasury has complied with last week’s court ruling,” a Treasury spokesperson told CNN on Wednesday.

The spokesperson did not provide any additional information. Federal courts had ruled the House could seek six years back from Trump, after the committee sought them in 2019 and again in 2021, according to public court records.

The handover had been suspended until the Supreme Court refused to intervene last week. Several justices, including Republican appointees, have ruled that the House has the power to seek the returns from the IRS.

The Treasury declined to say whether committee members had accessed the documents, according to a Treasury official.

The committee, led by Democratic Representative Richard Neal of Massachusetts, had researched six years of Trump’s tax records, mostly from when he was president. This included records on Trump personally and several of his corporate entities.

The panel plans to meet Thursday to learn about the legal ramifications of the section of the tax law that Neal used to request Trump’s tax returns, according to an aide to Neal.

Democrats are not expected to review tax returns during this session, and the documents should not be immediately made public.

House General Counsel Doug Letter plans to brief the panel on Section 6103 of the tax law at the meeting, which is a weekly session that committee Democrats have when they are not on vacation. .

Neal declined to tell CNN if he was in possession of Trump’s tax documents, saying the law strictly prohibits him from discussing the status of the returns. Earlier Wednesday, the congressman also declined to say whether he would publicly release any of the returns.

“The next step is to have a Democratic caucus meeting,” Neal said.

Trump’s legal team had continually sought to keep his returns secret and turned to the Supreme Court – made up of three of his nominees – after losing at the lower court level.

‘No Congress has ever exercised its legislative powers to compel a president’s tax returns,’ Trump told the Supreme Court, as he warned of the ‘profound implications’ of the DC Circuit’s decision . He had argued that the lower courts’ approach to the Chamber’s request ran counter to the Supreme Court’s decision in Mazars, regarding a subpoena the Chamber had issued to the accounting firm of Trump for his tax information.

Trump’s taxes have been largely a mystery since he first ran for office.

During his 2016 campaign, Trump broke with presidential election standards and refused to file his tax returns for public review, and they remained private after he took office.

Being audited by the IRS does not prevent someone from publicly releasing their tax returns. But that hasn’t stopped Trump from using it as a defense against leaking his financial information.

In 2016, Trump released a letter from his tax lawyers confirming he was being audited. But the letter also said the IRS had finished reviewing Trump’s taxes from 2002 to 2008. Trump had not released his tax returns from those years, even though the audits had been completed.

A major New York Times report in 2020 found that Trump paid no federal income tax for 10 out of 15 years from 2000 because he said he lost far more than he earned.

This story was updated with additional information on Wednesday.

malek

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