Only certainly one of Donald Trump’s annual federal income tax returns began being audited by the IRS when he served as president, despite the agency having a policy dating to 1977 of conducting mandatory tax examinations of sitting presidents, a House committee said in a latest report Tuesday evening.
And that IRS audit of Trump’s 2016 income tax return was not accomplished by the point he left office in January 2021, the report by the Ways and Means Committee found.
And neither of two Trump-related business entities that the IRS told the committee were a part of the mandatory examination program was designated for an audit in five of the six years covered by an investigation, based on the report.
And in that sixth yr, in 2017, there may be “no indication” the entities’ tax returns were designated for audit, the report found.
“Clearly, the mandatory audit program was dormant, at best, throughout the prior Administration,” the report said.
The report was released shortly after the Democrat-led panel voted along party lines to authorize the general public release of redacted copies of Trump’s federal tax returns and people of eight related business entities in coming days.
Those returns were obtained from the IRS after Trump lost a three-year legal battle, which ended with the Supreme Court ruling against him, in an effort to forestall the committee from getting the records.
Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, in a press release with the report said, “We anticipated the IRS would expand the mandatory audit program to account for the complex nature of the previous president’s financial situation yet found no evidence of that.”
“That is a significant failure of the IRS under the prior administration, and positively not what we had hoped to seek out,” Neal said.
The IRS didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment on the report.
The report found that when Trump was within the White House, the IRS didn’t designate for mandatory audit Trump’s tax return for 2015, when he was running for president, and nevertheless for the returns filed for the 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 tax years.
“The previous President’s individual income tax returns filed in 2018, 2019, and 2020 weren’t chosen for examination until after he left office and only the 2016 tax return was subject to a compulsory examination,” the report said.
And, “Notably, the IRS sent a letter to the previous President notifying him that his tax yr 2015
return was chosen for examination on April 3, 2019, which is the date the Chairman sent the
initial request to the IRS for the previous President’s return information and related tax return.”
The Ways and Means Committee report really useful that there needs to be a statutory requirement that a president’s tax returns be audited by the IRS annually, “with disclosure of certain audit information and related returns in a timely manner.”
“Such statutory requirement would make sure the integrity of the IRS, enable IRS employees to totally audit all issues, and restore confidence within the Federal tax system,” the report said.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., in a press release late Tuesday night said the House “will move swiftly to advance Chairman Richard Neal’s laws requiring the Internal Revenue Service to conduct an annual audit of the President’s funds.”
Trump has refused for years to voluntarily disclose his returns to the general public, claiming they were being audited by the IRS.
The tax agency in 1977 adopted an internal policy that supposedly requires mandatory audits of sitting presidents and vice presidents.
However the report said that since then, “Congress has been told nothing concerning the operation of
this program.”
“Until recently, the Committee didn’t know for certain whether the IRS conducted these
mandatory examinations and, if that’s the case, whether or not they were in accordance with this policy, thorough,
and fair,” the report said.
Read the Ways and Means Committee’s report on Trump’s tax returns and the IRS review of them here.
