Tag: Trump taxes

Mnuchin schooled on law that says turn over Trump’s taxes or face 5 years in prison: ‘There is no wriggle room’

On Thursday, Pultizer Prize-winning business writer David Cay Johnston wrote an editorial laying out the hard truth for Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin: he has no legal choice but to hand over President Donald Trump’s tax returns to Congress. The law says he must.

“The reason will no doubt surprise those who think Trump can thumb his nose at the law governing Congressional access to anyone’s tax returns, including his,” wrote Johnston. “It will for sure shock Trump, who claims that ‘the law is 100 percent on my side.’”

But not so: “Under Section 6103 of our tax code, Treasury officials ‘shall’ turn over the tax returns ‘upon written request’ of the chair of either Congressional tax committee or the federal employee who runs the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation. No request has ever been refused, a host of former Congressional tax aides tell me.”

View the complete April 12 article by Matthew Chapman of Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.

Mnuchin reveals White House lawyers consulted Treasury on Trump tax returns, despite law meant to limit political involvement

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Treasury Department lawyers consulted with the White House general counsel’s office on President Trump’s tax returns. (The Washington Post)

Treasury Department lawyers consulted with the White House general counsel’s office about the potential release of President Trump’s tax returns before House Democrats formally requested the records, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Tuesday.

Mnuchin had not previously revealed that the White House was playing any official role in the Treasury Department’s decision on releasing Trump’s tax returns.

Democrats are asking for six years of Trump’s returns, using a federal law that says the treasury secretary “shall furnish” the records upon the request of House or Senate chairmen. The process is designed to be walled off from White House interference, in part because of corruption that took place during the Teapot Dome scandal in the 1920s.

View the complete April 9 article by Damian Paletta on The Washington Post website here.

Fight escalates over Trump’s tax returns

Tensions are mounting in the fight over President Trump’s tax returns, as the deadline for when Democrats said the IRS must provide them to Congress approaches.

The escalating fight between Trump and Democrats puts pressure on two key administration officials who will testify on Capitol Hill on Tuesday: Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig.

Trump’s surrogates are publicly criticizing Democrats’ request for the returns, with acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney saying on Sunday that Democrats will “never” obtain the documents.

View the complete April 9 article by Naomi Jagoda on The Hill website here.

Grassley unintentionally contradicts White House claims that Congress can’t see Trump tax returns

The senior GOP senator and finance committee chair acknowledged the law gives Congress the power to get anyone’s tax returns.

A day after Mick Mulvaney, President Donald Trump’s acting White House chief of staff, vowed that congressional Democrats would “never” see the president’s tax returns, the longest serving Republican in the Senate went on Fox News and admitted that Congress does in fact have the authority to access those documents.

House Democrats previously asked the Internal Revenue Service to release Trump’s tax returns by Wednesday this week, as part of their ongoing probes into the many investigations of Trump’s 2016 campaign, inaugural committee, and business matters. When pressed on this during an interview on Fox News Sunday, Mulvaney said adamantly, “Never. Nor should they.”

Grassley, who serves as both Senate president pro tempore and chair of the Finance Committee, said Monday he did not actually want to see Trump’s tax returns but acknowledged that, under the law, he and House Ways & Means Chair Richard Neal (D-MA) have the right to do so.

View the complete April 8 article by Josh Israel on the ThinkProgress website here.

Trump spokeswoman doesn’t realize Trump is the only modern president to not release his tax returns

Every other modern president has voluntarily released tax returns.

A spokeswoman for President Donald Trumps’ 2020 campaign claimed Monday that Congress members should not be able to access his tax returns because they have no legitimate reason to demand them. Her reasoning: the request does not include tax returns for other U.S. presidents.

“Ironically, the only person whose tax returns they’ve asked for — the only president — is Trump. So it’s a sham reasoning,” Trump’s 2020 campaign press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told Fox News, referring to congressional requests for Trump’s tax documents, as part of its probe into the multiple ongoing investigations into the president’s company, campaign, and inaugural committee.

Any examination of how effectively Trump’s Internal Revenue Service is doing its job would focus on Trump’s returns out of necessity. But the other reason Neal did not need to request the tax returns for other previous modern presidents is simple: they all released their tax returns voluntarily.

View the complete April 8 article by Josh Israel on the ThinkProgress website here.

Mulvaney: Democrats will ‘never’ see Trump’s tax returns

Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said Sunday that Democrats will “never” see President Trump‘s tax returns.

“Nor should they. That’s an issue that was already litigated during the election. Voters knew the president could have given his tax returns, they knew that he didn’t, and they elected him anyway,” Mulvaney said during an appearance on “Fox News Sunday.”

He added that Democrats “know they’re not going to” get the tax returns.

View the complete April 7 article by Michael Burke on The Hill website here.

The increasingly suspicious pattern behind Trump’s nominees

President Trump is not a man in a hurry to fill top-level vacancies in his administration. He hasn’t nominated someone for 1 in every 5 top jobs. He has left “acting” officials in charge of the huge bureaucracies for months at a time without selecting replacements. He has yet to name ambassadors in some of the most important diplomatic outposts in the world.

But he has reportedly taken a keen interest in confirming one official: his pick for . . . IRS chief counsel?

It’s not difficult to surmise a very self-serving reason for that. And other recent Trump appointments only reinforce the possibility that his motives aren’t entirely pure here.

View the complete April 5 article by Aaron Blake on The Washington Post website here.

Trump lawyer calls on Treasury to reject Democrats’ demand for tax returns until Justice Dept. weighs in

An attorney for President Trump on Friday told the Treasury Department it should not turn over the president’s tax returns until it receives a legal opinion from the Justice Department, calling on Treasury to deny Democrats’ demands for six years of the president’s records.

William S. Consovoy, the attorney, attacked the request from Rep. Richard E. Neal (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, as a “gross abuse of power,” arguing that it risks encroaching on taxpayers’ privacy.

Consovoy’s letter is one of the early moves in what is expected to be an extensive legal fight over who has the authority to release Trump’s tax returns.

View the complete April 5 article by Jeff Stein and Josh Dawsey on The Washington Post website here.

White House maneuvers to block release of Trump’s tax returns

The White House could attempt to block the release of President Trump’s tax returns to Democrats, senior officials signaled on Thursday, an unprecedented step that might lead to a constitutional challenge and catapult the issue into federal court.

In an indication of how the standoff might escalate, Trump himself suggested that the Justice Department could become involved — even though Democrats directed their request to the commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service.

“They’ll speak to my lawyers and they’ll speak to the attorney general,” Trump said during an unrelated event in the Oval Office when asked about the Democrats’ request for six years of his personal and business tax returns.

View the complete April 4 article by Erica Werner, Damian Paletta and Jeff Stein on The Washington Post website here.

President Trump Cannot Hide His Tax Returns From Congress

Introduction and summary

Donald Trump has reneged on a promise he made nearly four years ago to release his tax returns publicly. By keeping his returns hidden, he has broken the precedent every president and major party nominee for president has followed over the past 40 years. His actions also heighten concerns about what he could be hiding.

The new Democratic majority in the U.S. House of Representatives has pledged to conduct the kind of vigorous oversight of the executive branch that has been lacking for the past two years. As part of that oversight agenda, House leaders have said that they intend to invoke their authority under the law to obtain Trump’s tax returns from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and to review them. Trump’s Treasury Department is threatening to withhold the returns from Congress and take the issue to the courts, where his team reportedly hopes to bog down the request in a “quagmire of arcane legal arguments.”1 But the law could not be clearer: Congress’ tax committees have the authority to obtain Trump’s tax returns on request—and the U.S. Treasury Department has no basis for refusing. Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin would be violating the law if he directs the IRS to stonewall Congress. Continue reading “President Trump Cannot Hide His Tax Returns From Congress”