Former President Donald Trump’s tax returns have been released after years of legal battles – and he warns the development will ‘lead to horrible things for so many people’.
House Democrats disclosed six years of Trump’s tax records on Friday morning.
The returns were unveiled 10 days after the Democrat-controlled House Ways and Means Committee published reports on Trump’s taxes that showed he claimed negative income in four years from 2015 to 2020. They also found that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) failed to audit Trump in his first two years as president and only started in 2019 when House Democrats pursued the records.
Trump through his campaign stated that ‘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’.
The ex-president said ‘the great USA divide will now grow far worse’ and that ‘radical’ Democrats have ‘weaponized everything’.
‘But remember, that is a dangerous two-way street!’ Trump stated.
‘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.’
Joint Economic Committee chairman Don Beyer in a House session on Friday said lawmakers took great care in ensuring the returns were treated sensitively and that personal and identifying details were redacted.
‘We’ve been trying to be very careful to make sure that we weren’t “weaponizing” the IRS returns,’ said Beyer.
Committee members requested and obtained tax returns and materials from the Treasury Department on Trump, his revocable trust and seven of his corporate entities including a golf club.
But those encompass just a fraction of Trump’s business interests, as he has financial links to more than 400 entities, House researchers said.
Trump’s tax returns showed that he held bank accounts overseas while in office. One page stated he had accounts in the UK, Ireland, China and Saint Martin.
The congressional report released earlier this month revealed that Trump and his wife Melania did not pay federal income tax in 2020 and wrote that their income tax liability was $750 or less in 2015, 2016 and 2017.
Trump’s returns show how he used tax law to minimize his liability. Parts of his finances were a mystery as he was the first presidential candidate in decades, since Richard Nixon, to decline to share his returns.
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