Two reports released late Tuesday revealed a wealth of new information about former President Trump’s finances during his tenure, including previously undisclosed business losses that resulted in Trump paying $0 in personal contributions during his final full year in office. Tax.
The new information comes after the House Ways and Means Committee voted to release President Trump’s taxes.
The reports from Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation and the House Ways and Means Committee offer a range of new insights into Trump’s finances during his tenure and the administration’s response, which Democrats have accused of showing a failure of internal oversight of the revenue service.
Overall, Trump appears to have paid a total of $1.13 million in personal taxes during his four years in office, the full return expected to be released in the coming days after congressional aides redact information such as Social Security numbers, street addresses and other identifying data.
“The president is no ordinary taxpayer,” House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-MA) said Tuesday of the controversial move to release the returns. “They have power and influence unlike any other American, and with great power comes great responsibility.”
As of Wednesday morning, Trump himself had not responded publicly to the disclosure of his financial information, but has routinely denounced the years-long pursuit of his tax returns and falsely claimed over the weekend that the entire business was on his Truth Social account. is illegal.
Nearly $4.8 million in personal losses in 2020
New details of Trump’s business that emerged in the report show that the business suffered huge losses in the first and last years of his tenure — but improved financially in between.
Trump’s net taxes in 2017 were just $750, before jumping to $999,466 in 2018 and $133,445 in 2019 before falling to $0 in 2020, according to a summary of the returns.
The vastly different tax returns reflect changes in Trump’s reported adjusted gross income due to his changing business fortunes. In 2018, he reported revenue of more than $24.3 million, a dramatic turnaround from 2017, when he reported a $12.9 million loss in his first year in office.
Trump remained profitable in 2019, with adjusted gross income of nearly $4.4 million, before slipping back into the red in 2020 with a loss of nearly $4.8 million, the report said.
The report also looked at the tax returns of some of Trump’s businesses and found that DJT Holdings LLC suffered an ordinary business loss of nearly $60 million in 2020.
some or mr. Trump’s business problems have long been known, and many observers have pieced together that the 2020 COVID pandemic and resulting lockdowns hit Trump’s hotel business particularly hard. The figures released on Tuesday did not include 2021, when Trump is also thought to have counted business losses as part of the fallout from his role on Jan. 1. 6 riots, less impact after leaving office.
More recently, some observers have suggested that Trump’s business fortunes may have improved over the past year or so, thanks in large part to efforts to restructure corporate debt.
After the New York Times obtained Trump’s 2020 tax return data from decades ago, Trump’s low tax bill for 2017 was only $750, but did not include details of Trump’s presidency.
“A Big Failure for the IRS”
A parallel report from lawmakers was also released Tuesday night. Neal’s staff is responsible for reviewing the government’s response.
The IRS has a policy requiring the agency to audit it while a sitting president is in office, but the report found that the agency has largely failed to do so during Trump’s presidency.
In one instance, investigators allege, the agency only began the audit process the same day the committee reached out for documents.
“The committee anticipates that these mandatory audits will be conducted expeditiously in accordance with IRS policy,” Neal said Tuesday. “However, our review found that the scheme was dormant under the previous government.”
“This was a major failure of the IRS under the previous administration, and certainly not the outcome we hoped to find,” he added.
Neal is pushing Congress to pass a new law in the next few years called the President’s Tax Reporting and Audit Transparency Act of 2022, which would codify current IRS policy.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said in a statement, “This report identifies the legislative steps that must now be taken to preserve the public trust, and we will act swiftly to advance Chairman Richard Neal’s legislation requiring the IRS to conduct an annual audit of the president’s finances.”
But it’s unclear whether the idea will take off in the coming years. Lawmakers are currently busy wrapping up their work through 2022 and heading home for the holidays until 2023, when Republicans who have been denouncing Neal Enterprises take control of the House.
Ben Werschkul is a Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance.
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