Today's New York Times Op-Ed by Mitchel Zuckoff (a journalism prof at Boston University), titled "Why We Ask to See Tax Returns" (Aug. 6, 2016), at A19, goes beyond my list of reasons taxpaying voters may learn items of interest from reviewing presidential candidates' tax returns. Looking at the history of the tax return disclosure precedent and the way it adds value "as a measure of character", Zuckoff says outright what I merely hinted at in talking about tax scams--a presidential candidate could be a crook and taxpayers deserve to know!
It started with Richard M. Nixon, and Congress's July 1969 decision to eliminate what seemed like a gigantic tax-avoidance loophole that allowed sitting presidents to take large tax deductions for donating presidential papers to an archive. (For his historical information, Zuckoff references Joe Thorndike's paper for the Capitol Historical Society, JCT Investigation of Nixon's Tax Returns (Feb. 2016).) Congress observed, notes Zuckoff, that "a president's papers already belong[] to the public." As for Nixon, his 1969 tax return claimed a half million dollar deduction (quite a huge sum 47 years ago) for donating presidential documents 4 months before the law change.
When Nixon's deduction became public in 1973 (in connection with a Watergate-related lawsuit), it turned out that the donating deed was dated before the 1969 law change was enacted but was signed months after the change had come into effect (i.e., it appeared to be a backdated document intended to game the system to get the big tax deduction). At first, Nixon refused to release his returns and opposed any audit. The IRS at first "bowed to his wishes." But then someone leaked information to a reporter about how much Nixon had actually paid in taxes in 1970 and 1971, when he had income of almost half a million--less than a thousand dollars both years. As Zuckoff puts it, "He paid the equivalent of a family of three earning about $8000 in 1970 dollars."
This sounds a bit like the story of Warren Buffet paying a higher rate than his secretary, but worse. Or Mitt Romney, with his millions in income, paying at a rate of less than the preferential capital gains rate of 15%, but worse.
Eventually, the IRS did audit Nixon's returns. Eventually, too, Nixon gave in to the pressure from the press and released 5 years of returns in December 1973 and asked a congressional committee to review his gift of presidential papers. Eventually, Nixon resigned from office under threat of impeachment because of the Watergate coverup, and had to pay a considerable amount to the IRS.
And taxpaying voters lived happily ever after (until now), since every nominee since has released tax returns (except Ford, who released only a summary). So, says Zuckoff, "Nixon got it right: The American people need to know if their president is a crook."
Back in April, the Chamber of commerce suggested that it might sue the Treasury Department for violating the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) over the new inversion regs that were issued in April (T.D. 9761, REG-135734-14). See Fortune article (Apr. 6, 2016). Well, now they have, not surprisingly in federal court in Austin, Texas, where business lawsuits against government regulations tend to get a favorable view. See e.g., Business groups sue over new U.S. limit on tax-driven foreign buyouts, Reuters (Aug. 4, 2016); Liz Moyer & Leslie Picker, Tax-Avoiding Mergers Find Champion in U.S. Chamber of Commerce, N.Y. Times (Aug. 4, 2006); Alison Bennet, Businesses Launch First Suit Against Inversion Rule, Bloomberg BNA (Aug. 4, 2016); U.S. Chamber Sues So American Firms Can Move Overseas and Dodge Taxes, Underground.com (linking to Washington Post article). The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Texas Association of Business have initiated a suit against the Treasury Department over the new regulations . The complaint, filed on August 4, 2016, is available on BNA at the following link: Chamber of Commerce of the U.S. v. IRS, W.D. Tex., No. 1:16-cv-00944.
The business groups claim that the regulations are making business harder for big companies to carry out transactions, referencing the proposed merger between U.S. drugmaker Pfizer and Ireland pharmaceutical company Allergan (both members of the Chamber of Commerce). That merger, projected to save the U.S. company about $35 billion in taxes, fell apart immediately after the new regs were released. See Michael Merced and Leslie Picker, Pfizer and Allergan Are Said to End Merger as Tax Rules Tighten, NY Times (Apr. 5, 2016). the lawsuit claims that Treasury did not have authority to issue the regulations and that there was insufficient notice to taxpayers under the Administrative Procedure Act.
In yesterday's post, Taxes, Government, and the Good Life, I noted the "long-term position of the GOP" in favor of downsizing government, which can be seen, at least in part, as a way to justify the GOP obsession with cutting taxes on the wealthy and on corporations (mostly owned by the wealthy). Worth exploring in that context is Eduardo Porter's article entitled "The Case for More Government and Higher Taxes," NY Times (Aug. 2, 2016).
Porter starts by noting the radical shift in the way Americans think about government. "Americans once appreciated the government that serves them. That’s long gone." He draws on research by the Pew Research Center showing that 4 of every 5 (or more) voters have said in the last 6 years that government makes them feel frustrated or angry.
That anger with government has become extraordinarily visible in this election season as one of the candidates for president has seemingly fed on the distrust and hate of a government whose leader's face is different from the majority white population. Most of us have seen this anger on the screen during the GOP convention, as Trump supporters--mostly white (only 18 out of almost 2500 delegates were black)--expressed their frustration with the societal changes that they see as leaving them behind and creating a world that they don't like. On the right, that is, the frustration with government seems to morph easily into vitriol, as Trump supporters openly condemned blacks and used violent expressions to talk about the first female presidential nominee of a major party, Hillary Clinton. (See, e.g., the video below "Unfiltered Voices from Donald Trump's Crowds"--warning: there is offensive speech here.)
Americans once understood that government allows people--through taxes, through voting, through volunteering--to create public institutions that could never exist if each one of us had to do it alone. Through government, we citizens as taxpayers can accomplish projects much larger than ourselves.
But the shift that Porter mentions has occurred over the last few decades, due, in large part, to the funded effort by various "think tanks" and high-powered, wealthy individuals in support of a larger goal of maintaining very low regulation on Big Oil, Big Pharm and other Big Business and ensuring very low taxation on rich individuals and the corporations they own and manage. The constant repetition of mantras that denigrate government persuade Americans that, as Reagan said while serving as the most powerful government leader in the world, "Government is the problem" or, as Rush Limbaugh said, it should be downsized until it can be drowned in a bathtub (paraphrasing). We constantly hear from the Fox News bloviators that the growth of government stifles the economy, that private enterprise is ALWAYS better than government at doing any job, that public employees should be fired--or at least not allowed to form unions that give them strength in negotiations, etc. Most of these statements appear without support--those on the right simply presume them to be true and are not very willing, in my experience, to delve into the actual facts to see if they support the presumption. And the push for deregulation and tax cuts for the benefit of the rich continues apace.
As we approach this November election, though, we should ask ourselves what evidence there is to support that mantra. Is it just a way to 'brainwash' voters into voting against interest? Is it just a way to ensure that the elite 1% continue to be able to get Congress to enact laws that favor them? Is it just a way to convince Americans that regulation is bad because the 1% doesn't want their ever increasing profits to be reduced one whit by fair wages sharing productivity with workers, or regulation that would protect the natural beauty of this great country while providing for a more sustainable economy?
Porter suggests a new book as a worthwhile reference on the topic: How Big Should Our Government Be?, by Jon Bakija, Lane Kenworthy, Peter Lindert, and Jeff Madrick. The authors, he notes, make clear the value of government and suggest that there are four important tasks for government facing us now.
“A national instinct that small government is always better than large government is grounded not in facts but rather in ideology and politics,” they write. The evidence throughout the history of modern capitalism “shows that more government can lead to greater security, enhanced opportunity and a fairer sharing of national wealth.”
"The scholars laid out four important tasks: improving the economy’s productivity, bolstering workers’ economic security, investing in education to close the opportunity deficit of low-income families, and ensuring that Middle America reaps a larger share of the spoils of growth."
The article includes a good graphic, available here, showing the importance of government to quality of life. Countries that have increased tax revenues as a percentage of GDP have achieved better GDP growth than the United States, which has enacted numerous tax cuts and kept government extraordinarily small (and also less innovative). As the blurb for the graphic says,
"Despite arguments that Big Government hinders economic activity, many countries where government has grown the most have also experienced stronger economic growth. Governments have grown across most industrialized nations — raising more taxes over time to offer more public services. In the United States, by contrast, the government remains virtually as small as it was 50 years ago."
Readers will want to look at the graphs accompanying the Porter article, available here, showing GDP growth versus tax revenue as a share of GDP from 1960 to 2013, and the change in tax revenue as a share of GDP from 1965 to 2014 for most OECD countries. (I was unable to reproduce them here, though the black point in the left graph below is the United States, and the thick black line in the right graph below is the United States.) These figures clearly show that the economic growth that the right claims to want to produce is in fact highly correlated with more government spending and higher taxes as a percent of GDP. Of course we want the taxes to be reasonable and the spending to be the right kind--public infrastructure and human capital, basic research that supports biomedical, technical and other innovations, etc. But blanket statements that smaller government is always better, that private enterprise always does things better than government, or that ordinary Americans are better served by "getting rid of" regulations developed to protect people and our environment--those kinds of ideological dogmas are simply ungrounded in fact.
In 2012, Ed Asner narrated a cartoon video prepared for the California Federation of Teachers called "Taxing the Rich". It's worth watching, given the four-decades-long effort by the GOP to convince ordinary Americans that "trickle down" economic goodies will be coming their way if they only support the fat cats' desire for even more tax cuts for the rich, elimination of the estate tax paid by the rich, and "corporate tax reform" so that the corporations mostly owned by and benefiting their rich shareholders (and shareholder/managers) pay even less than the paltry amount they now pay in taxes.
This has accompanied the long-term position of the GOP that wants to "shrink government" (see, e.g., Heritage Foundation, Mar. 15, 2005, The Impact of Government Spending on Economic Growth, setting forth the ideological position favoring shrinking government spending as "less efficient[]" than private sector spending)--as though the jointly undertaken endeavors of American citizens working together through government were inevitably less good than private spending (even if that private spending permits a very small portion of the population to grab all the productivity gains from the vast majority of the population). Shrinking government, that is, has been treated as a goal in itself, even though there is no clear evidence supporting the ideology and in fact considerable evidence on the other side--i.e., America's adhering to spending the same percentage of GDP for public functions now as it did 50 years ago has stifled growth compared to other countries that have wisely invested in human and physical capital through infrastructure and health care and similar public projects.
But the side benefit to the rich of convincing ordinary Americans to vote against interest and support downsizing taxes (with tax cuts mostly to the benefit of the wealthy) while downsizing government functions (with benefit cuts mostly to the detriment of ordinary people) has been the increasing inequality of ownership of assets and power in this country. The wealthy have taken a larger and larger share of the pie, while using their wealth to lobby against decent livable wages for their workers, get laws passed that make it difficult or impossible for their workers to unionize to have some strength to negotiate better contracts to claim a share of the productivity gains, and still telling their workers to be thankful for the tidbits that "trickle down" (as though paying a substandard wage for a hard day's work is a mark of generosity--no wonder Trump thought he could claim that his "work" to earn "billions" by shortchanging contractors and suppliers, workers and partners was a "sacrifice").
Here's the blurb that accompanies the video on YouTube
Donald Trump, in all his boasting about his enormous wealth and success, doesn't even pretend to pay substantial amounts in taxes (and perhaps pays so little that he has decided based on that knowledge not to comply with the longstanding tradition of releasing tax returns so citizens can judge for themselves what kind of citizen the aspirant for high office really is). Trump's attitude is not really different from the received wisdom of the Republican party. The GOP has worked to achieve tax cuts for the rich for decades, since Reagan began cutting their taxes in 1981 (and raising taxes on seniors and others).
In other words, Trump and the GOP generally seem to view it as patriotic for the rich to pay as little in taxes as possible, even though their riches in large part are owed to wealth-friendly policies gained through intensive lobbying made possible by their immense wealth and cozy relationships with congressmen elected (again with the help of that immense wealth) on right-wing platforms--such as so-called "right to work" laws that really are "elimination of negotiating power with Big Bosses" laws, encouraging nonunionized workers to resent the benefits unions have achieved for unionized workers (rather than realizing they should unionize to fight for those same benefits for themselves), environmental and safety deregulation, grumbling about deficits and telling people "government is the problem" instead of investing in public infrastructure (roads, schools, health research, funding of the arts), and wealth-friendly tax policies (privileged low rates for their main source of income from capital and inherited windfalls with no tax to the heirs and miniscule tax to the deceased whose estate generally escaped tax during life and was subject to a pittance of an estate tax after death).
When facts are examined, it is clear that the U.S. government--at least outside of the military--is now too small for the immense tasks facing us. We have starved the IRS while assigning it more and more functions, meaning it is much harder for the IRS to effectively enforce the laws, allowing wealthy people and big corporations with sophisticated lawyers a better chance to scam the system while ordinary people pay taxes due through withholding. We have cut back substantially on federal support for vital basic research, with the expected consequences that the nation is beginning to fall behind on technological and medical innovations. (Too many of our big pharmacy companies would rather just run the price up on drugs than do the hard research to develop new cures.) Public support for education at the local, state and federal level has failed to keep up with the need for improved school buildings, better paid teachers, and support adequate to maintain good learning environments for all schoolchildren. While regulations should be regularly examined to ensure they still make sense, the U.S. has fallen behind on necessary regulation of commercial enterprises that have substantial impact on sustainable living: environmental infrastructure--from innovative responses to the man-made global warming to programs to counter zika, ebola, and the problem of antibiotic resistance--is underfunded or just plain missing; while companies cheat workers --claiming they are independent contractors, cutting hours and using contingent scheduling that tends to cost more to the worker than they earn in the short time at work, failing to pay overtime due, or failing to remit health insurance premiums deducted from paychecks.
It's time for Americans to start hearing from more of their leaders, and more from the people they trust in their local jurisdictions who are firefighters and teachers and preachers and social workers and businessmen, about the importance of governmental work and the public infrastructure that taxes support. True patriots know that taxes are the way we work together to build a genuine community.
We are now a few months from election day, when Americans across the country will go to the polls to vote for the person they think should be placed in the highest elective office in the land as president of these United States.
There are many reasons to hope that Trump is not the person selected.
His supporters seem to come especially from that group of white males who have experienced so much anger as their privileged position as the dominant group in society has given way to a more inclusive society in which women, the LGBT community, people of color and people of various religions are both more visible and more able to achieve positions of greater influence and power. Those Trump supporters are so eager to re-affirm their own self-worth that they apparently see in his rudeness, bigotry, narcissism, and bullying only his willingness to be confrontational to "powers that be", which somehow translates into their view that he will be a good leader. They cannot seem to see that, like most bullies, he uses confrontation, rudeness, impoliteness, bigotry and bullying as his defense against his inability to respond in substance to issues that are raised, that he grabs a wordbat and hits out against anybody, no matter how decent they may be, if they do not stroke his huge ego. As with all bullies, that is not a sign of strength but a sign of weakness. Worse, it is a weakness that provides a vulnerable target for shrewd autocrats like Putin in Russia who can use Trump's narcissism to manipulate him, as we've already seen in Trump's willingness to abandon NATO to cuddle up to Putin and to appease Putin for his aggressive annexation of Crimea. In all of this, we are left to worry how such an ill-tempered, poorly matured, unwise narcissistic and bigoted character could possibly make the difficult, nuanced decisions necessary of a powerful leader, especially when lacking in rudimentary knowledge about geopolitical, scientific, and economic affairs.
Trump seems to be claiming that we should think him suited for president because he inherited millions and maybe (he claims) amassed "many billions" more through a long-term pattern of stiffing and suing his suppliers, contractors, and workers--mostly ordinary working guys like the white men that have been bamboozled into supporting him-- in order to grab more money for himself. Along the way, he and his businesses went through six bankruptcies. Maybe one bankruptcy could be forgiven in a presidential candidate, and one big business failure could be seen as a life lesson that has the possibility of enriching experience and creating a more mature mindset. But six bankruptcies by a person prone to use litigation as a tool to avoid paying for work done appear to be just another way of stiffing the "little people" to whom Trump owes money.
It is in this context that Trump's refusal to release even one year of his back tax returns suggests that he knows they would look bad to ordinary Americans. So let's consider 1) whether Trump's excuses are worth giving any weight and 2) what kinds of information can be revealed by tax returns that would help us judge Trump's credibility as a candidate.
1. WHAT REASONS MIGHT TRUMP HAVE FOR NOT RELEASING TAX RETURNS?
a. There is no law that requires a candidate to release tax returns.
There is no law, but there is strong precedent supporting release. Many presidential candidates and presidents, including Republicans Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, George Romney, and John McCain, have released multiple years of returns. Trump's opponent, Hillary Clinton, has released many years of tax returns that are readily available online (see, e.g., Hillary Releases 8 years of Tax Returns, Politico, July 31, 2015; Hillary Clinton's 2007 through 2014 Tax Returns) and the Clinton Foundation's Form 990 is of course available.
b. Trump's most recent tax returns are under audit.
It is apparently true that Trump's most recent few years of tax returns are under audit (though of course we have nothing other than Trump's say so even on this), and this is the current excuse Trump relies upon for not releasing any of his tax returns. His campaign manager, Paul Manafort, told CBS This Morning on July 27 that "Mr. Trump has said that his taxes are under audit and he will not be releasing them." See here. He has suggested that when the audits are done, he will release but even that isn't certain.
Note, however, that there is no law that says returns under audit cannot be released: a taxpayer may release his own tax returns whenever he pleases. Commissioner Koskinen of the IRS has made clear that it is very rare for people to be audited every year (even for billionaires), and returns can be released by taxpayers while under audit.See here.
Moreover, Trump has many years of tax returns that are clearly no longer under audit, and the excuse doesn't apply to those returns. Even if he withheld (for personal reasons and not because of the audit) the last 3 years' returns, he should be able to release the 10 years before then.
Furthermore, there is no precedent for refusing to release returns because of an audit: Richard Nixon released his returns while they were under audit.
c. Trump's tax returns might provide some useful "trade secret" or other private, proprietary business information to competitors.
The concern about competitor's acquiring proprietary information is, of course, an argument made by businesses for maintaining the current rules regarding confidentiality of returns--ie, the rules that do not allow publication of filed returns or release to government officials other than as authorized by the Code. These confidentiality rules were put in place by the 1974 Privacy Act and the 1976 Tax Reform Act. They were in large part a reaction to Republican President Richard Nixon's Watergate mess and the discovery that the Nixon Administration had been using tax information as a tool against its "enemies".
Of course, these concerns about protecting taxpayers that gave rise to the confidentiality rules have little bearing on a taxpayer-candidate's release of his own returns for the voting public's benefit. Any truly important "trade secret" information could simply be redacted by the taxpayer for the release.
Furthermore, Trump has a habit of bragging about all his business ventures and how much money he claims to have made or contributed and even how well he has avoided paying taxes. He has continued to use the campaign context to promote his 'brand', so privacy on exactly these issues does not seem to be an important issue for him.
d. Trump's tax returns might reveal information about Trump himself.
It is undoubtedly true that release of tax returns does reveal information about the taxpayers, which is the main reason that the decades-long precedent of return release by candidates was established in the first place. That information is helpful to voters in understanding who the candidate is, how the candidate has operated, and what kind of stake the candidate has in this country (and other countries).
Trump's tax returns, while not all-revealing, would disclose information that is directly relevant to claims that Trump has been making on the campaign trail since the start of the primaries. The returns might provide further information about Trump's purported charitable contributions, income, extraordinary business success and other matters. They might even show that Trump "is deeply involv[ed] in dealing with Russia[n] oligarchs", according to George Will.
Odds are the real potential for the real information, whatever it is, to be seen as problematic by voters is the real reason Trump has not released his returns: he knows what is in them, and he knows how those facts match (or don't match) the many and varied claims he has made.
2. WHY IS IT IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST FOR THE PUBLIC TO BE ABLE TO REVIEW TRUMP'S TAX RETURNS?
a. Tax returns reveal the categories and amounts of income and losses that a candidate has reported.
Tax returns generally provide considerable information about how much income a taxpayer receives from various sources, or what activities have led a taxpayer to claim losses. Those categories and amounts of income and loss paint a picture of the taxpayer-candidate that can substantiate the image the candidate is trying to project or undermine it, depending on how honest and trustworthy that candidate has been in his or her self-description. If a candidate, like Trump, claims that he is qualified for the presidency because he is an enormously successful businessperson which has resulted in enormous wealth, then to the extent that tax returns reveal low income (even though there could be significant assets) that implies mediocrity or failure or much less wealth and business acumen than claimed, the candidate is revealed as untrustworthy, something that really matters to voters on the left and on the right, as evidenced by the growing distrust of "career" politicians.
Further, if a candidate's income is almost entirely from capital assets at the very low rate at which our tax rules currently tax income on capital, taxpayers can assess whether this person is actually capable of understanding the situations of ordinary taxpayers who work for a living rather than living off inherited wealth plus the kind of capital that builds on that inherited wealth, status, and connections. Remember that Mitt Romney's returns showed a very low effective tax rate (less than 15%) , which resulted in part from his gaining much of his income from tax-favored work in a private equity firm for which compensation is not taxed at ordinary income rates as it is for most ordinary workers.
Moreover, if a candidate's income is primarily from being paid for essentially licensing the use of his name without any real work attached (as apparently was the case with the profits to Trump from the so-called "Trump University" that sold itself as representing his chosen experts and his business wisdom when he apparently did not select any of the experts and the "wisdom" was a ten-year-old publicly available real estate investment manual, see, e.g., Trump University Lawsuit Advances as Judge Curiel Deals Blow to Donald, Huffington Post, Aug. 2, 2016 ), that fact reveals something about a candidate's character and ability to carry out the arduous job of president.
Finally, Trump has represented himself as having "huge" amounts of income annually and said that his "sacrifice" matching a Muslim couple's loss of their son in service in the U.S. military is earning millions through having a hugely successful business. (I'll leave readers to imagine what I think about Trump's ridiculously self-centered response to the Khan family's sacrifice). If in fact Trump's returns show relatively smaller amounts of income and project less success than the "yuuge" success he claims, the public could rightly conclude that the candidate has misrepresented himself to them. If a candidate lies about his wealth and sources of income, what else might he lie about?
b. Tax returns reveal the candidate's charitable contribution record.
Trump has claimed often that he gives away a lot of money for good causes, yet most investigative journalism has produced very little evidence that the claim is true. Trump had promised huge contributions from a January 2016 event he sponsored for veterans in place of participating in one of the primary debates, but didn't make his own promised $1 million contribution until late May after considerable pressure from the national press. See, e.g., At Least $1.9 MIllion in Donations Trump Collected For Vets Was Sent Last Week, NPR (May 31, 2016). Some investigative reporting on Trump's foundation suggests that Trump and the foundation have a "pitiful" record when compared to other billionaires like Gates, Buffett, and Bloomberg. See, e.g., Trump: The Least Charitable Billionaire, The Smoking Gun.com (Apr.12, 2011); Missing from Trump's list of charitable giving: His own personal cash, Washington Post (Apr. 10, 2016). Such behavior raises legitimate doubts about his claims of generosity.
Tax returns include the taxpayer's claimed deductions for charitable contributions. Does Trump give very little or 1% or 10% or more of his "yuuge" income to charity? Tax returns will tell.
c.Tax returns show (if reported as required) if a taxpayer has income from overseas accounts.
Robert Willens mentioned this in a Washington Post article as a potentially worrying thing for Trump: if he has "money parked overseas" he is supposed to disclose those accounts to the IRS. For someone who has claimed that he wants to see money invested in America, it would be a clear indication that his actions speak louder than his words if in fact he has moved money overseas.
d. Tax returns reveal something about the taxpayer's willingness to push the boundaries of reasonable tax positions.
Most ordinary taxpayers have little room to engage in transactions designed to lower their taxes. Most of us work at jobs where tax is withheld out of each paycheck, with a little more due or a little bit due back as a refund on filing. We may have more or less in charitable contributions one year or have large medical expense deductions in another. But we have neither the vast sums of money nor the expensive legal assistance to engage in transactions designed primarily to reduce our taxes.
Wealthy people routinely use sophisticated legal tax advice to get the lowest tax rates possible, to "milk the system to their advantage." Trump has bragged about doing so, of course, and that is not necessarily bad in itself. But tax returns can reveal (though depending on the detail released, it may be hard to see) whether a candidate goes beyond reasonably prudent tax planning to participation in shelters. If a candidate who says we should be investing in the United States moves his wealth out of this country to avoid paying taxes to the country that made that wealth creation possible, voters should care. If a candidate uses questionable tax dodges in his business or personal life, voters should care even more. If a candidate has engaged in some of the bogus tax shelters pushed by aggressive shelter promoters, voters should be outraged. If there is evidence that a candidate has submitted false information on a return (see new evidence that Trump Didn't Pay Taxes, Drudge Report (June 15, 2016) (reporting on two tax appeals lost by Trump in the 1990s in which (i) he claimed expenses but not related income and (ii) apparently filed a return signed by someone who stated he had not prepared the return), voters should care deeply about what that would mean in the office of the President.
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In conclusion:
It's worth remembering that Trump's position during the 2012 campaign was that Romney should release his tax returns and that he, Trump, would have no problem doing so because "it's a great thing when you can show that you've been successful, and that you've made a lot of money, that you've employed a lot of people. I actually think that it's a positive." (See the video at this link for this January 30, 2012 Fox & Friends statement by Trump.)
Back in the 2012 campaign, he also said he would (maybe) release his tax returns when Obama released his birth certificate. (See the video below for this interview with Stephanopoulos.) Beyond the fact that such a condition (a sitting President's release of a second, full-form birth certificate) is irrelevant to the release of tax returns, of course, Obama did release his full long-form birth certificate to quell the stupid controversy Trump manufactured out of thin air, so that excuse is just as flimsy as every other one. Trump hasn't released his tax returns.
When push comes to shove and it is Trump's turn to release his returns, he has come up with only flimsy excuses and bombast. He's clearly depending on his campaign methodology of attacking all those who press him on issues and defying common rules of courtesy to carry him through. Voters shouldn't buy it. We can learn a lot about a candidate from reviewing his tax returns, and what we learn is very relevant to that person's qualifications for the presidency. If Trump doesn't release those returns soon, it leaves us to assume that there is something really negative in them in respect of the picture he has tried to project of himself as a successful, wealthy, and generous businessman who can get things done.
Addendum: Worth noting on this topic is Michelle Ye Hee Lee's August 1, 2016 article in the Washington Post, What we know about Donald Trump and his taxes so far. It includes some information from the 1970s and 1980-90s (including the two tax cases mentioned above).
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