U.S. House Okays Bill Requiring Audit Of Presidential Tax Returns

The Democratic-led House of Representatives has voted to require the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to audit presidents' tax filings after lawmakers concluded the agency did not examine Donald Trump's returns while he was in the White House, Andy Sullivan reported for Reuters.

Photo Insert: The IRS has already audited two years of President Joe Biden’s taxes but has yet to finish a single audit of Trump’s taxes during his time in the White House.

The legislation, which passed on a largely party-line vote of 222 to 201, faces long odds of passing the Senate and becoming law in the final days that Democrats control both chambers of Congress.

However, it gives Democrats another chance to talk about Trump's tax returns, which he fought for years to keep private even though other presidential candidates have voluntarily disclosed them for decades.

Tax filings released on Tuesday by a House panel, after a years-long battle, showed that he paid no income tax in 2020, his final full year in office, despite millions of dollars in earnings from his sprawling business empire.

The House Ways and Means Committee also said the IRS did not properly examine his returns while he was in office. Trump's tax records show that his income and tax liability fluctuated dramatically between 2015 and 2020, during his first presidential bid and subsequent term in office.

They show that Trump and his wife Melanie minimized their tax liability through large deductions and losses and paid little or no income tax in several of those years.

Reporting for HuffPost, Mary Papenfuss wrote that critics slammed the IRS for failing to follow its own rules requiring all presidents to be audited while in office, largely giving former President Donald Trump a massive free pass a few short years before his company was convicted of tax fraud.

The IRS has already audited two years of President Joe Biden’s taxes but has yet to finish a single audit of Trump’s taxes during his time in the White House, even though IRS regulations mandate audits of all presidents, Papenfus added.

The New York Times also reported that IRS is understaffed and this explains why there is a $7-trillion “tax gap” of revenue over a decade that is owed but goes uncollected, in “many cases from superrich taxpayers” like Trump.

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