Washington | The Internal Revenue Service failed to audit former US president Donald Trump’s tax filings during his first two years in office despite a program that makes the auditing of sitting presidents mandatory, a House committee revealed on Tuesday (Wednesday AEDT) after an extraordinary vote to make public six years of his tax returns.

Mr Trump filed returns in 2017 for the two previous tax years, but the IRS began auditing those filings only in 2019 – the first on the same day in April that the Ways and Means Committee requested access to his taxes and any associated audits, a report by the panel said. The IRS has yet to complete those audits, it said, and the agency started auditing his filings covering his income while president only after he left office.