Donald Trump’s tax returns released by US Congress

Donald Trump’s tax records have now been released in full and have raised eyebrows for the tens of thousands of dollars he received from his kids.

Former US President Donald Trump may have received a “gift” of up to $35,000 from his son Eric with further payments of thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars from his other son Donald Jnr and daughter Ivanka.

If that’s the case, it’s possible he should have paid more in tax.

The unusual payments have turned up with the release of six year’s of Mr Trump’s full tax returns. He had tried strenuously to get the tax records withheld.

They show that while in some a years of his presidency he paid millions of dollars in tax, in other he paid nothing at all.

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Part of Donald Trump’s tax returns.

Returns show how ‘successful I am’

US politicians released Mr Trump’s tax returns on Friday (US time) as he prepares for another run at the White House in 2024.

The Republican leader — who lost his re-election bid as he served a single term from 2017-2021 — broke with tradition by refusing to release the records, triggering feverish speculation about what they might contain.

The House Ways and Means Committee released a summary earlier in December of six years of filings, from 2015 to 2020, as part of investigations into the presidential audit program.

The documents showed that Mr Trump wasn’t being regularly audited by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and that, despite reporting millions in earnings, he paid little in tax by claiming large business losses.

“The ‘Trump’ tax returns once again show how proudly successful I have been and how I have been able to use depreciation and various other tax deductions as an incentive for creating thousands of jobs and magnificent structures and enterprises,” Mr Trump said in a written statement to CBS News.

Former US President Donald Trump said the tax returns, which he had fought to keep private, show how successful he was. Picture: Drew Angerer/Getty Images/AFP

The returns themselves released on Friday were not expected to yield sensational new revelations, but Democrats hope they will add detail on Mr Trump’s businesses and particularly any foreign concerns that might present conflicts of interest.

“In terms of high-end product influx into the US, Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,” the former president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, is reported to have told a New York real estate conference in 2008.

“Say, in Dubai, and certainly with our project in SoHo, and anywhere in New York. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”

The House Ways and Means Committee voted on December 20 to release all of Trump’s 2015-2020 returns, ending a four-year battle between Democrats and the former president that eventually reached the Supreme Court.

Donald Trump received interest payments in 2017 from his son Eric (L) of $24,000 and from Donald Jnr (R) of $8715. (Photo by Desiree Navarro/WireImage)

Some year big tax payments, some years none

The summary showed that the 76-year-old billionaire mostly claimed enormous annual deficits.

He paid $1.6 million ($US1.1 million) in federal taxes in 2018 and 2019, the middle two years of his presidency, after making around $44m ($US30m) selling assets.

But that dwarfed his $1104 ($US750) bill in 2017 — and he paid nothing at all as his losses mounted in 2020.

The report also showed that Trump had carried forward $155m ($US105m) in net operating losses on his 2015 return, $107m ($US73m) in 2016, $66m ($US45m) in 2017 and $34m ($US23m) in 2018 to reduce his tax liability.

The New York Times alleged in 2020 that Trump had paid no income tax in 10 of the previous 15 years after reporting massive losses.

Possible ‘gifts’ to Trump from children

The Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT), a committee of the US Congress, has raised questions about some of the items on Mr Trump’s tax return including loans to his children with interest rates which could indicate they were actually gifts.

According to CNN, while the JCT stated it didn’t have an opinion on whether the ex-President should have paid more or less tax, it had suggested auditors look into the loan payments and the accompanying interest rates.

The sticking point is the rates. If they are not at market rate it could indicate the payments should have been classified as gifts for tax purposes.

CNN reported that in 2017, Trump’s return stated he received precisely $US18,000 in interest on a loan to Ivanka Trump. He received $US8715 in interest rates from his son Donald Jnr and $US24,000 from Eric.

In it’s report the JCT pondered if “the loans were bona fide arm’s length transactions, or whether the transfers were disguised gifts that could trigger gift tax and a disallowance of interest deductions by the related borrowers”.

Former supervisory special agent for the IRS’ criminal investigation unit Martin Sheil told the broadcaster it was “unusual” and “very rare” to receive interest payments in such round numbers.

A separate congressional report on the IRS’s mandatory presidential audit program showed it was not doing its job during most of Trump’s time in office.

“The IRS only opened one mandatory examination from 2017 to 2020 for returns filed while the former president was in office,” the report reads.

The IRS began to audit Trump on the very day that Ways and Means Democrats requested his tax information in 2019.

-with AFP.