PS-MSNBC

 

Well, Trump said he didn't think that despicables on a witch hunt should be allowed to dig through his tax returns, cause, you know, the IRS already did, and besides, they wouldn't keep them confidential.
Well, duh.
Trump tax return data could be released by congressional committee (msn.com)
The Democratic-controlled House Ways and Means Committee is expected to vote Tuesday on whether to make public six years' worth of information about former President Donald Trump's tax returns -- a move Trump has long fought.

Now even dispicables would be stupid to try and argue that releasing his tax returns somehow served the public good, you know, without at least laughing their asses off, but that isn't going to stop these people from releasing those returns.

The other funny part is that there are not any despicables smart enough to understand what they are looking at, and only a few deplorables smart enough to understand the thousands of pages of tax forms. Course, that won't stop the pundits from cherry picking and finding little tidbits they can twirl over.

Good job, despicables. Another right to privacy shattered by government largese.

 

The House ways and Mrans committee just voted to publicly release Trump's tax returns.

 

Foregone conclusion.
Whatever happened to tax returns are confidential?
Doesn't apply to trump, does it.

 

Trump is the first presidential candidate in decades who did not publish his tax returns. I think this is the reason:

 

Yeah, and fuck his expectation that just like the despicables who judge him, he can expect his tax returns to be confidential, eh?

Like nancy antoinette.

 

Shooter got curious about how many elected congress members release their tax returns?

Turns out, the ones most insistant that trump should have released his, and made it their mission to get them, don't release their returns.

Why would that be, do you suppose.
https://thawts.net/most-members-of-congress-do-not-release-their-own-tax-returns-to-the-public/

 

Because they're all hypocrites....

 

Hypocrites and liars who quit taking care of our business a long time ago.

 

And yet you keep voting for them.

 

Did he also check out who was the previous president not to release his tax returns.... I doubt it, but I did.

Gerald Ford number 38.

Even the supposedly corrupt Bill Clinton released his and Hilary released hers during the 2015 campaign.

The question must be what is tRump trying to conceal.

 

There is a very great deal of new information already coming out about Trump;s tax returns. But for right now lets dispel the bullshit myth that Trump or anyone else has the expectation of privacy when it comes to their tax returns. There are multiple ways someone's tax returns can become public including laws that gives Congress that authority. And Trump's fight to keep his taxes secret is actually another example of how he managed to corrupt the entire government down to the level of a shit hole country were even though the law cold not be more clear his henchmen, in this case Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin chose to ignore it.. Another prime example of Trump's lawless dictatorship. Which was rejected by every court all the way to the Supreme Court. Because the law says the returns SHALL be turned over to the Congressional committees upon request.

 

One thing that is funny about this is the Ways and Means Committee is on very solid legal ground for making Trump's tax returns public because the law states they will be reviewed in executive session unless the person agrees to make them public. And Trump promised repeatedly that he would release his taxes as soon as they were not being audited. And that would include at least the first two years of his presidency because the IRS did not audit him.

'Extraordinary measures' were justified to overcome Trump's 'unprecedented' refusal to release taxes: House Dem

Brad Reed
December 20, 2022



Donald Trump at CPAC / Gage Skidmore



In an interview with Raw Story, Rep. Dan Kildee (D-MI) defended the House Ways and Means Committee's vote to release redacted information on former President Donald Trump's taxes.

In response to criticism from Republicans that Democrats were using "unprecedented" measures to release information on the former president's taxes, Kildee argued that such measures were needed given Trump's total refusal to provide the American public with any information about his finances.

"If there's something that's unprecedented, it's the experience we've had under the era of Donald Trump," he said. "It requires, sometimes, some extraordinary measures to overcome such a character in our history. This is a person who broke precedent with our history by not releasing his tax returns."

He then threw his Republican colleagues' rhetoric back at them by noting all the times that they had brushed off instances of Trump breaking long-held norms.

READ MORE: Senate Republicans would rather deal with Democrats than McCarthy as he resorts to threats: CNN's Tapper

"If the Republicans want to have a conversation about the unprecedented nature of the last several years, this is not the place to start with," he said. "He did everything he could during his time running for office and standing in office to continue to obscure himself from public scrutiny."

Kildee also said that the Internal Revenue Service had failed to even meet the "minimum requirements" when it came to closely scrutinizing Trump's finances.


https://www.rawstory.com/raw-investigates/trump-taxes-dan-kildee/

 

The American people has every right to see Trump's taxes and the corruption surrounding them.

IRS never audited Trump during first two years in White House despite policy of 'mandatory' audits for presidents

Brad Reed
December 20, 2022



Donald Trump (Photo by Jewel Sawad for AFP)


After the House Ways and Means Committee voted to release redacted information about former President Donald Trump's tax returns, the committee's Democrats revealed that the Internal Revenue Service never bothered auditing Trump for the first two years of his presidency.

As the New York Times reports, "House Democrats revealed that the materials they obtained showed that the IRS had failed to audit Mr. Trump’s tax filings during his first two years in office, despite having a program that makes audits of sitting presidents mandatory."

Furthermore, they found that the IRS only started an audit of Trump's taxes in 2019, when House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-MA) delivered a formal request for them.

However, it seems that the audit of Trump's taxes was never completed.

RELATED: 'Extraordinary measures' were justified to overcome Trump's 'unprecedented' refusal to release taxes: House Dem

John Koskinen, the former I.R.S. commissioner who served during the first year of Trump’s presidency, tells the Times that he had no involvement in the process to audit presidential taxes, although he did think it was strange that the IRS did not follow its own policy.

"It does seem to me to be a legitimate question, if the IRS had the responsibility and wasn’t auditing, what’s the explanation?" he said.


https://www.rawstory.com/trump-taxes-irs/

 

Trump tax returns reveal questionable $300 million in deductions deserving scrutiny by prosecutors: biographer

Tom Boggioni
December 21, 2022



Donald Trump (Photo by Saul Loeb for AFP)


In a column for Bloomberg, former Donald Trump biographer Tim O'Brien claimed information contained in Donald Trump's tax returns -- which will be made public in one form or another by the House Ways and Means Committee -- already have some red flags in them that should interest prosecutors.

On Tuesday the committee announced it would release the former president's tax returns, with CNN reporting, "The committee also released a report Tuesday that detailed six years’ worth of the former president’s tax returns, including his claims of massive annual losses that significantly reduced his tax burden," before adding, "The committee also released a supplemental report from the Joint Committee on Taxation that included details on Trump’s tax returns from 2015 to 2020, ahead of the planned release of the returns themselves."

According to O'Brien, who has seen some of Trump's tax documents previously, the former president wouldn't be in this position if he had not run for office in 2016 which, in turn, invited the scrutiny he avoided for years as a New York real estate developer.

With that in mind, he wrote, "What a fine mess he has gotten himself into. There are certainly more surprises to come, but a pair of summaries of the House Ways and Means Committee’s analysis of Trump’s personal and business tax records from 2015 through 2020 contained interesting revelations that will trouble the former president and certainly draw the attention of prosecutors."

Of particular concern, he explained, is Trump's use of deductions that will likely be put under the microscope by investigators in the Department of Justice and by officials in the state of New York where his Trump Organization was just convicted on 17 counts of tax fraud in a Manhattan courtroom.

According to O'Brien, "The records question the validity of about $300 million in tax deductions claimed by a skein of Trump holding companies for such write-offs as charitable giving, operating losses and business expenses. Both reports speculate that about $51,000 was given to his three eldest children as gifts, but may have been disguised as loans to avoid tax payments."

Adding, "... one of the reports shows that a mandatory audit of Trump’s returns only occurred in one of the six tax years that should have been scrutinized," the Trump biographer continued, "What is new is the extent to which Trump and his cohorts may have run roughshod over institutional checks and balances designed to prevent presidents from grifting while in office — and to also help ensure that financial conflicts of interest don’t collide with sound public-policymaking."

"As more information about his finances surfaces in coming days, it will be a reminder of the extent to which the former president played a shell game with his wealth and business interests while in power — and what he might try to get away with again if he occupies the Oval Office in the future," O'Brien concluded.

You can read more here.

https://www.rawstory.com/donald-trump-tax-returns-2658994221/

 

There you have it shootersa. The reason the IRS did not find anything wrong with Trump's tax returns is because they did not look.

 

Calls for investigation after Trump tax returns expose 'audit' lie — and years of 'negative income'

Igor Derysh, Salon
December 21, 2022



Donald Trump addresses crowd in Sioux City, Iowa in 2016. (Shutterstock.com)


The House Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday voted to release years of former President Donald Trump's tax returns and revealed that the IRS did not perform mandatory audits during his first two years in office.

The panel voted to release Trump's tax returns from his years in office after winning a yearslong court battle to obtain them even though the IRS was required to turn over the information to the committee by law. The committee said it discovered that the IRS failed to carry out mandatory audits of the former president's taxes until the same day that Ways and Means Chairman Richie Neal, D-Mass., sent a written request in April 2019 for the information. Trump, who defied decades of tradition by refusing to release his tax returns, had repeatedly falsely claimed that he could not release his tax returns himself because he was under audit.

The IRS failed to act even as Trump's tax forms raised questions about how he used tax deductions to reduce his tax liability, according to a separate report from the Joint Committee on Taxation.

The tax returns themselves are expected to be released publicly in the coming days after certain information is redacted.

"The research that was done as it relates to the mandatory audit program was nonexistent," Neal told reporters after Tuesday's hearing.

Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, who sits on the committee, told CNN that the returns showed that there were "tens of millions of dollars in these returns that were claimed without adequate substantiation."

Former IRS Commissioner Josh Koskinen told The New York Times that "it does seem me to be a legitimate question: If the IRS had the responsibility and wasn't auditing, what's the explanation?"

After the IRS finally launched its first audit in 2019, Trump used Freedom of Information Act requests to delay the probe and failed to "provide all the facts needed," among other delay tactics, according to the committee's report. The agency only assigned a single agent to the task, which further slowed down the audit.

A Wall Street Journal analysis of the tax data released by the committee showed that Trump and his wife Melania declared "negative income" in four of the six years between 2015 and 2020. The Trumps paid $750 or less in income taxes in three of those years. In all, their total net tax liability over the six years was $1.8 million, including self-employment taxes and household employment taxes.

The tax data showed the Trumps' income fluctuating wildly, rising to as high as $24 million in 2018 after selling properties and investments before falling to $4.4 million in 2019, the only other year they reported positive income.

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

Earlier tax documents obtained by The New York Times showed that Trump paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years before taking office because he reported losing more than he earned.

The new tax data shows that Trump reported $60 million in losses during his presidency.

The Times also previously reported that Trump used so-called land donations as charitable contributions to reduce his tax burden, writing off property taxes on his Westchester County Seven Springs estate by reclassifying it from a personal residence to an investment property. Trump has written off $2.2 million in property taxes as a business expense on the property even though the law only allows individuals to write off up to $10,000 per year.

The committee said Trump also made charitable contributions in cash, which warrants additional investigation.

"We would have inquired as to whether the large cash contributions were supported by required substantiation," the report said, adding that the IRS is looking into the tax scheme.

Legal experts urged further investigation into the IRS' failure to audit Trump's tax returns.

"The IRS dereliction of duty is sadly in line with Secret Service, FBI and DHS subservience to Trump when in office. Disgraceful," tweeted former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, who served on special counsel Bob Mueller's team.

"Investigations need to take place, and that can happen internally at the agency or the Justice Department might decide to step in to figure out what went wrong," former U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance told MSNBC. "It's tough not to see some form of corruption lurking in the wings here, but we do need to find out what precisely those facts are," she added.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said after the vote on Tuesday that the House will "swiftly" take up Neal's new legislation requiring the IRS to conduct an audit of the president's finances.

Trump's campaign slammed the committee over the release, falsely describing it as a "leak."

"This unprecedented leak by lameduck Democrats is proof they are playing a political game they are losing," a campaign spokesperson said in a statement. "If this injustice can happen to President Trump, it can happen to all Americans without cause."

Republicans on the committee also accused Democrats of weaponizing the tax returns.

"Let me be clear: Our concern is not whether the president should have made his tax returns public, as is traditional, nor about the accuracy of his tax returns," Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, said Tuesday, according to the Post. "Our concern is that, if taken, this committee action will set a terrible precedent that unleashes a dangerous new political weapon that reaches far beyond the former president."

Neal defended the release in a press conference.

"This was not about being punitive. This was not about being malicious," he said, citing the IRS' failure to perform its responsibility.

"It's about one office: The presidency," added Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif., who sits on the committee. "It's about making sure there are checks and balances for the presidency."

Trump's tax returns, meanwhile, have quickly become cable news fodder.

"It proves that Hillary Clinton was right all along. Nancy Pelosi was right all along; Chuck Schumer was right all along. The Democrats were right all along. Reporting from the New York Times was right all along; Washington Post, too, was 100 percent correct all along. Donald Trump was not under audit. Donald Trump was lying," MSNBC host Mike Brzezinski said Wednesday.

"He was desperate to hide the truth from Americans," she continued. "That truth, that far from being a shrewd businessman, he was, in fact, the biggest loser out of the 300 million Americans who filed their taxes with the IRS. The man lost more money than any other American, at a time when he was writing 'The Art of the Deal.'"



https://www.rawstory.com/calls-for-...xpose-audit-lie-and-years-of-negative-income/

 

I wonder what the gaping hinds of flyover country will say about this.

 

IRS mandatory presidential audit policy goes under spotlight
Associated Press, December 22, 2022

WASHINGTON (AP) — An IRS policy governing the audits of tax returns filed by U.S. presidents is under new scrutiny after a report published by a congressional panel found the agency failed to perform the mandatory inspection of Donald Trump’s returns until Congress pressed for information about the process.

The three-point policy states that individual returns for the president and the vice president are subject to mandatory review, “should always be kept in an orange folder,” should be kept from the eyes of IRS employees and “should be locked in a secure drawer or cabinet when the examiner or reviewer is away from the work area.”

The report released Tuesday by the Democratic majority on the House Ways and Means Committee said the process, which dates to 1977, was “dormant, at best” during the early years of the Trump administration.

By comparison, there were audits of Biden for the 2020 and 2021 tax years, said Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman. The first determined the Bidens were due an additional federal income tax refund, Bates said by emails. The second, for 2021, “found that they owed an additional $13, which could have been waived under IRS policy but they chose to pay.”

Democrats in Congress are responding by introducing legislation that would codify the IRS policy into law with more stringent requirements.

Tax experts say the failure to launch the audit earlier is emblematic of a larger problem regarding the IRS’ capacity to examine high-income taxpayers’ returns — and a reminder of Trump as a norm-defying president.

John Koskinen, who served as IRS commissioner during both the Obama and Trump administrations, said the policy has been out of the public eye because presidents have traditionally released their tax-return summaries to the public. --------------

So, the reason the IRS did not find income tax fraud by Trump is that it was not looking. I even read somewhere that Trump's hidden tax returns indicate that he really did collude with Russia to win in 2016. We will see. I sure hope that is true.