Donald Trump paid $0 in income taxes in the last year of his term, 2020. And in 2017 he paid $750. Both data contrast with that of the 1.1 million that he paid in total in the years 2018 and 2019.
The explanation regarding the null payment of 2020 would be that that year his income decreased and his losses increased. But there are doubts as to whether, in order to reduce or avoid taxation, the Republican leader used deductions in articles that may not justify it.
The data appears in tax returns and that, much to the chagrin of Trump, the Ways and Means Committee of the House of Representatives published on Friday by resolution of the Supreme Court. The decision put an end to three years of political and legal dispute between that parliamentary body under Democratic rule and the reluctant ex-president, who thus suffers a new setback in one of his lowest moments in recent years.
Published reports show that the United States tax agency, the Internal Revenue Service, or IRS, did not audit Trump during the first two years of his presidency and did not begin the examination process until 2019. That was after House Democrats Baja would have launched supervision procedures to try to gain access to the tax records of the former chief executive.
The nonpartisan Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation found several red flags in the former president's files when reviewing Trump's statements for the Ways and Means Committee. The dubious evidence warranted, he said, further investigation. Among the points of suspicion, the supervisory body pointed to the leader's transactions with his children and a deduction linked to a resolution of fraud claims against the now-defunct Trump University, reported The New York Times.
The statements include some sensitive personal information, such as the far-right ex-president's Social Security number and his bank accounts. There are almost 6,000 pages, which include more than 2,700 individual statements by Trump and his wife, Melania, and another 3,000 pages of statements by the former president's companies.
The publication is substantiated after a vote in the aforementioned commission, a week ago. Democrats on the committee argued that transparency and the rule of law were at stake, while Republicans countered that the publication would set a dangerous precedent for the loss of privacy protections.
The Democrats had the majority, which next week they will lose in the House as a whole when they take over from the mid-term elections on November 8, where the Republicans won by a narrow advantage of nine seats ( 222 to 213).
Trump refused to release his remarks during his White House campaign and subsequently fought a legal battle to keep them secret while he was president. However, the Supreme Court ruled last month that he had to deliver the statements to Congress.
