Paying no tax shows how successful I am: Donald Trump

Former US president says his opponents have ‘weaponised everything’ as his tax returns are published.

Former US president Donald Trump says the fact that he barely paid tax is evidence of his business success. Picture: AFP

Donald Trump lashed out on Friday after a Democrat-led congressional committee published his tax returns over a six-year period, confirming that he paid little or no tax during his time in the White House.

Days before the Republicans retake control of the House of Representatives, the ways and means committee released the former president’s tax returns for the years 2015 to 2020. It obtained the documents after a three-year legal battle with Mr Trump, who was determined to keep his financial records secret.

WALLACE: No, Mr. President, I’m asking you a question. Will you tell us how much you paid in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017?
TRUMP: Millions of dollars.
WALLACE: So not 750?
TRUMP: Millions of dollars. And you’ll get to see it. And you’ll get to see it. pic.twitter.com/Tz1IY3kyWl

— Acyn (@Acyn) December 30, 2022

The thousands of pages of documents, which were still being reviewed on Friday, confirmed an initial report last week that Mr Trump paid little or no income tax during his presidency, despite reporting tens of millions of dollars in earnings from his global property empire. After claiming huge business losses to offset his income, he paid $US750 ($1100) in tax in 2016 and 2017. In 2020 he paid no income tax at all.

Mr Trump, who appealed in vain to the US Supreme Court to block the release of the documents last month, condemned the publication and the committee in a statement. “The Democrats should have never done it, the Supreme Court should have never approved it, and it’s going to lead to horrible things for so many people,” he said. “The radical-left Democrats have weaponised everything – but remember, that is a dangerous two-way street.”

The former president said the documents showed only “how proudly successful I have been ... creating thousands of jobs and magnificent structures and enterprises”.

As far back as 2017, protestors were calling on Donald Trump to release his tax records. Picture: AFP

The release of the tax returns comes at a difficult time for Mr Trump, who faces mounting criminal investigations on several fronts, including allegations of fraud at his family business. The Trump Organization was convicted of tax fraud by a court in New York this month. Although Mr Trump is not personally liable in that case, he and three of his adult children are also accused of widespread fraud in a civil lawsuit that will go to trial next year.

The Democratic congressman Don Beyer, a member of the ways and means committee, claimed that Mr Trump had deployed “questionable or poorly substantiated deductions and a number of other tax-avoidance schemes as justification to pay little or no federal income tax ... a pattern consistent with the recent conviction of his family business for criminal tax fraud”.

Critics are hoping that the release of the tax returns will begin to unravel the secrecy around Mr Trump’s business ties overseas. One page of the documents revealed that he had bank accounts in the UK, Ireland, China and the Caribbean island of Saint Martin.

The Democrats pounced upon the revelation that Mr Trump held a bank account in China until 2018, during his first two years in the White House. “Generally, you only have bank accounts in a foreign country if you are doing transactions in that country’s currency,” the congressman-elect Daniel Goldman tweeted. “What business was Trump doing in China while he was president?”

Senior Republicans have denounced the release of the returns as a politically motivated abuse of power that undermines the right to privacy of every American. Congressman Kevin Brady of Texas, the senior Republican on the committee, said on Friday that Democrats had made the “unprecedented decision to unleash a dangerous new political weapon that reaches far beyond the former president”, adding that it overturned “decades of privacy protections for average Americans”.

Donald Trump and one of his tax returns.

The Democrats countered that Mr Trump had abused the norms put in place after the Watergate scandal that brought down President Nixon to prevent a conflict of interest in the White House. Although it is not mandatory, every US president in modern times has disclosed his financial records on taking office. Mr Trump was the first to refuse.

Comparing Mr Trump to Nixon, Beyer said he had “abused the power of his office to block basic transparency on his finances and conflict of interest”. Mr Trump, he said, “acted as though he had something to hide”.

The committee has criticised the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for breaking its own rules in failing to conduct an audit of the sitting president for three of his four years in office. The IRS did not launch an investigation of Mr Trump until the day that the committee requested his returns in 2019, prompting years of legal and political wrangling.

The committee has called on Congress to pass legislation tightening the rules around the mandatory audit of the sitting president.

“Our findings turned out to be simple: IRS did not begin their mandatory audit of the former president until I made my initial request,” Richard Neal, the committee chairman, said.

“A president is no ordinary taxpayer. They hold power and influence unlike any other American. And with great power comes even greater responsibility.” He accused the IRS of a “major failure”.

Mr Trump has previously boasted about not paying income tax. During a presidential debate with Hillary Clinton in 2016, he said that not paying taxes “makes me smart”.

He again broke with tradition by refusing to divest his business interests while he was president. He faced persistent allegations of a conflict of interest as foreign dignitaries and Republican Party officials were in effect obliged to spend money in his luxury properties, including a Washington hotel close to the White House, to gain access to him and his inner circle.

The Times