The latest in a string of attempts by the former President to prevent the release of his tax returns, Donald Trump pleaded with the Supreme Court on Monday to block the committee’s request for access to them.
Tuesday, Chief Justice John Roberts consented to temporarily stay a lower court’s order compelling the IRS to give Trump’s tax returns to the Democratic-controlled House Ways and Means Committee.
In his urgent appeal to the Supreme Court, Trump stated that “no Congress has ever used its legislative authority to seek a President’s tax returns.”
Trump defied recent precedent for presidents and presidential candidates by refusing to make his prior tax returns available, claiming that he was the subject of an audit and hence was unable to do so. Even though he is being audited, he can disclose them. Additionally, he has argued time and time again that tax returns don’t reveal much financial information. (This is untrue as well.)
Trump’s years-long continuous attempts to keep his tax returns secret demand the obvious question: Why? And the following are a few possible explanations that come to mind:
1. Trump could not be as wealthy as he claims to be. Shortly after beginning his campaign for president in 2015, Donald Trump claimed to have a net worth of more than $10 billion. In that year, according to Forbes, his net worth was less than half that amount. Trump seems to exploit his ludicrously exaggerated wealth claims as indisputable evidence that he is wiser (and better) than other people. It’s incredibly feasible that releasing Trump’s tax returns would deflate the bubble he’s been inflating for most of his adult life.
2) Despite his assertions that he pays “a lot,” he might not be paying (or hasn’t been paying) his fair share of taxes. We know that Trump paid no federal taxes in 11 of the 18 years of returns that The New York Times was able to get because to their reporting. Trump paid just $750 in federal taxes in 2017, his first year in office, which is a pitiful amount for someone of his riches. “Trump has paid almost $400 million less in cumulative federal income taxes than a very affluent person who paid the average for that category each year,” according to The Times.
3) The repayment of $73 million. The Times’ reporting revealed that Trump requested a $72.9 million tax refund in 2010. (He claimed significant losses that were at the time largely ascribed to the failing of his casinos in Atlantic City.) In 2011, the IRS began an audit of the refund, which was still underway in 2020. It’s incredibly probable that Trump just doesn’t want to talk about the refund issue again for fear of being held responsible for the money.
4) Donald Trump might have loans with foreign nations or people. We are aware of the former president’s close involvement with the potential building of Trump Tower Moscow thanks to Michael Cohen’s congressional testimony. Furthermore, Cohen lied to defend Trump about his involvement (and how long it lasted). At a 2008 real estate conference, Donald Trump Jr. allegedly said: “Russians make up a really disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets in terms of high-end product flood into the US. Consider Dubai and, undoubtedly, anywhere in New York, along with our project in SoHo. We observe significant inflows of cash from Russia.
5) He might not make many (or any) charitable contributions. Rather than using his charity for philanthropic objectives, Trump has long utilised it to line his personal pockets and amass political donations. (Trump ended the charity’s operations in 2018). It’s unclear how generous Trump has been, if at all, to other charities throughout the years. Wealthy people are not required to give a lot of money to charity, yet many do. And therefore, if it turned out that Trump’s repeated assertions of generosity given to charity were untrue, it would be a really terrible look for him.
Regardless of the reason or reasons, it has been evident for the past seven years that Trump is adamant about keeping his tax returns secret. This raises the question of what he is still concealing.