Trump’s tax returns will be released to the public on Friday, House committee says

The House Ways and Means Committee plans to release Donald Trump’s tax returns on Friday, a spokesman for the committee said Tuesday.

The committee voted to make the results public in a party-line vote last week, and initially planned to release the documents last Wednesday, but the release was delayed because employees are still removing sensitive personal information like Social Security numbers from the documents. .

Trump’s six-year collection of personal statements and some of his business statements are expected to be included in the Congressional Record on Friday as part of the House’s pro forma session. The latest delay was first reported by CNN.

The clock is ticking for the committee, which will hand over control to the Republicans when the new Congress is sworn in next week.

The committee got the results in November after years of court battles over the secret documents, which other presidents have routinely made public for the past four decades.

Trump’s refusal to release his statements sparked a wave of suspicion about what he was trying to hide: foreign business dealings, a smaller fortune than he had publicly claimed, or whether he was paying less in taxes than the average American.

The dispute ended in the Supreme Court, which rejected Trump’s last-minute statement in a brief order entered just before Thanksgiving.

A 39 page report of the Joint Committee on Taxation released last week showed that Trump had been paying relatively little in taxes, including just $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017 and none in 2020.

The report also found that despite IRS policy that presidents must undergo mandatory audits, the agency did not begin reviewing their taxes until the Ways and Means Committee requested information on mandatory audits in 2019.