The US House of Representatives will release former President Donald Trump’s federal income tax returns this Friday in a farewell gesture to its majority in the lower house of the US Congress that the Republican opposition, which will pick up the baton in the coming days, has described as a «dangerous political precedent.»
Although the newspaper ‘The New York Times’ disclosed in 2020 decades of tax information about Trump, the New York magnate always refused to make public his income tax returns, ending a «tradition» started during the mandate of Jimmy Carter.
Now, and with the approval of the conservative US Supreme Court, which approved the procedure by six votes in favor to three against, the US House Ways and Means Committee is preparing to officially publish some documents after denouncing that Donald Trump only submitted once throughout his entire term to the mandatory annual presidential audit, reports CNN.
Experts consulted by ‘The Hill’ have indicated that it will take time to break down all the information (it is about five years fiscles, from 2015 to 2020), and do not anticipate exceptional revelations, but they could provide additional information on key areas of interest regarding Trump’s business and professional associations.
The top Republican figure within the committee, Congressman Kevin Brady, has lamented the release of these documents as a «dangerous new political weapon that goes far beyond the former president and eliminates decades of privacy protections for average Americans.»
In fact, Trump himself, already in full pre-campaign mode with an eye on the 2024 elections, has called the decision an «outrageous abuse of power» and an «unhinged witch hunt», before urging the current president, Joe Biden, and what he described as the «Washington cartel» to make public their own statements, something that the current president has been doing voluntarily since 1998.
According to the documents released so far, Trump paid 1 million (all figures in euros) in federal income taxes in 2018 and 2019, in stark contrast to the 700 euros he paid in 2017. In 2020 he paid no taxes, according to a report by the Joint Tax Committee.
Trump reported a capital gain of 20 million in 2018 and a gain of 8.5 million in 2019 thanks to the sale of assets that interrupted years of losses: 30 million in the red in 2015 and 2016, and 12 in 2017. In 2020, when the pandemic hit, Trump declared 4.5 million in losses. He paid no taxes that year.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
