Donald Trump’s Tax Returns, the Ones He Really Doesn’t Want Anyone to See, Are Headed to Congress

Remember when Donald Trump refused to release his tax returns while running for president the first time around? And falsely claimed he couldn’t because they were under audit? And pinkie-promised he would would just as soon as that audit was over? And then—big shocker here—never did? And people were like, “Hmmm, does he have something in those returns he’s trying to hide?” And then, answering their own question, were like, “Of course he does. Didn’t you read that article about him committing ’outright fraud’?” Since then, Trump has, among other things, tried to extort another country for his own political gain, lied to the public about a deadly disease, attempted to overturn the results of a free and fair election, unleashed a bloodthirsty mob on the US Capitol, and took top secret documents with him when he left the White House, including, allegedly, ones about another country’s nuclear secrets. So it would be entirely reasonable if you’d forgotten about the whole tax returns situation—which is now back in the news and not looking great for the ex-president.

On Thursday, the US Court of Appeals for the DC circuit declined Trump’s request to reconsider an August ruling that the House Ways and Means Committee can obtain his tax returns from 2015 to 2020. (For those of you keeping up at home, that would include two of the years that he paid just $750 in federal incomes taxes, and one of the years he paid nothing.) The committee has been trying to acquire the records since 2019; while Trump was in office, his Treasury Department unsurprisingly refused to turn them over. And when he was out of office, Trump sued to prevent Joe Biden’s from doing so, claiming the committee was going after the documents for political purposes. In August, the appeals panel disagreed, concluding the lawmakers had “a legitimate legislative purpose” in examining the returns, and on Thursday, the full court agreed.

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While Trump can and will, no doubt, appeal the decision to the Supreme Court, the Thursday ruling was a particularly tough blow because it declined his request to freeze the release of the records pending another appeal. In a statement, Richard Neal, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said, “Former President Trump has tried to delay the inevitable, but once again, the Court has affirmed the strength of our position. We’ve waited long enough—we must begin our oversight of the IRS’s mandatory presidential audit program as soon as possible.”

In 2018, three Pulitzer Prize–winning New York Times reporters revealed that Trump amassed much of his fortune through “dubious tax schemes” that included “instances of outright fraud.” (At the time, a lawyer for Trump insisted that “the New York Times’ allegations of fraud and tax evasion are 100 percent false, and highly defamatory. There was no fraud or tax evasion by anyone.” He added that if there was fraud or tax evasion, Trump had nothing to do with it, saying: “President Trump had virtually no involvement whatsoever with these matters.”) In 2020, the Times revealed that Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes in 2016, another $750 in 2017, and nothing whatsoever in 10 of the previous 15 years. So you can probably understand why he’d like to keep his tax returns under lock and key.