US House committee releases Trump tax returns, capping years-long battle

WASHINGTON - A Democratic-controlled United States House of Representatives committee released six years of

former president Donald Trump’s tax returns

to the public on Friday.

It is an extraordinary move days before Republicans are due to take control of the chamber.

The release of Mr Trump’s redacted returns from 2015 to 2020 caps a multi-year battle between the Republican former president and Democratic lawmakers that was settled only in November by the US Supreme Court.

It is the latest blow for the 76-year-old. He was impeached twice by the Democratic-led House, only to be acquitted both times by the US Senate.

Mr Trump now faces multiple legal woes as he mounts

a 2024 re-election bid.

Earlier in December, the House committee investigating the Jan 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol by his supporters asked federal prosecutors to charge him with four crimes, including obstruction and insurrection for his role in the deadly riot.

House Ways and Means Committee chairman Richard Neal requested the returns in 2019, arguing that Congress needed them to determine if legislation on presidential tax returns was warranted.

Republicans said the move could lead to the political weaponisation of individual tax returns.

They warned that party members who take over the panel in January would face pressure to pursue a similar path against high-profile Democrats.

Mr Trump, who took office in 2017, was the first presidential candidate in decades not to release his taxes.

He sued the committee to try to keep them private but the US High Court ruled in the committee’s favour.

In a report on Dec 21, the committee outlined its findings from its examination of the documents.

It said the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) broke its own rules by not auditing Mr Trump for three out of four years while he was president.

Details previously released by the panel showed Mr Trump paid no income tax in 2020, his final full year in office, despite millions of dollars in earnings from his sprawling business empire.

The records show that Mr Trump’s income and tax liability fluctuated dramatically from 2015 to 2020, during his first presidential bid and subsequent term in office. They show that Mr Trump and his wife Melania claimed large deductions and losses and paid little or no income tax in several of those years.

Democrats were on a tight timeline to find a way to handle the returns once they obtained them, given that Republicans will take control of the House next Tuesday after winning a slim majority in November’s midterm elections.

The Democratic-controlled House passed a Bill before it left on its winter recess that would mandate that the tax-collecting IRS complete audits of presidents’ tax filings within 90 days of their inauguration. REUTERS