Threeyear Battle Comes To An End As The IRS Hands Trumps Tax Returns Over To Congress
The IRS has sent the House Ways and Means Committee six years’ worth of former President Donald Trump’s federal income tax returns, a week after the Supreme Court rejected his attempt to prevent the Democratic-controlled panel from obtaining the information.
Trump’s tax returns have been requested by the committee ever as the Republican president was still in office in 2019.
Image of Donald Trump via Flickr/Gage Skidmore is licensed with CC BY-SA 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit /licenses/by-sa/2.0According to a spokeswoman for the Treasury Department, “Treasury has complied with last week’s court judgment.” The Internal Revenue Service is a division of the Treasury Department.
For an investigation of how the IRS examines presidential tax returns, the Ways and Means Committee has stated that it wants copies of Trump’s returns as well as the tax returns of various Trump-related legal organizations. The tax authority is required by law to examine a president’s returns each year.
Image of Donald Trump via Flickr/Gage Skidmore is licensed with CC BY-SA 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit /licenses/by-sa/2.Trump defied decades of precedent by refusing to make his tax returns publicly available both as a candidate for president and as president. According to him, he was keeping them secret from the public while they were being audited. Taxpayers are not, however, legally prohibited from making their returns public.
The returns won’t be made public by the committee either.
Federal employees break the law by disclosing a tax return’s details. The staff of Congress as well as its members work for the federal government.
The Treasury Department first refused to provide the committee with Trump’s tax returns three years ago. The panel then brought legal action to get the records.
After President Joe Biden took office, the government gave up fighting the committee. Trump then filed a lawsuit to prevent the data’ dissemination.
Image of President Joe Biden via White House Flickr/Public DomainWhen courts determined that the Ways and Means Committee had a clear-cut legal right under federal law to collect the data and had identified a legitimate legislative purpose for the request, the former president lost that endeavor in federal district court and appeals court.
He subsequently requested an emergency order from the Supreme Court preventing the committee from receiving the returns.
> The House Ways and Means Committee has received Donald Trump’s federal tax returns from IRS
Now the question is how quickly they can review them before GOP takes over
Reminder – Trump broke precedent and public should have seen some tax returns pre-2016/cHqp2rM3vq
— Wendy Siegelman (@WendySiegelman) November 30, 2022
The Supreme Court authorized a temporary halt.
But on November 22, the nine-member court rejected Trump’s plea to keep the barrier in place without dissent, clearing the way for the IRS to send the returns to the Ways and Means Committee.
The judgment was criticized by Trump, who had selected three of the six justices who make up the supermajority on the court.
“Why would anybody be surprised that the Supreme Court has ruled against me, they always do,” Trump posted on his social media app Truth Social.
> BREAKING (CNN): The House Ways and Means Committee now has six years of Donald Trump’s federal tax returns, ending a yearslong pursuit by Democrats to dig into one of the former president’s most closely guarded personal details.
— Adam Parkhomenko (@AdamParkhomenko) November 30, 2022
“The Supreme Court has lost its honor, prestige, and standing, & has become nothing more than a political body, with our Country paying the price.”
“Shame on them!” he wrote.