Trump claims his tax returns prove success

Former US President Donald Trump boasted on Friday that his tax returns show how successful he was as a real estate developer. Democrats, who had been calling on Trump to release the records since he first ran for office, published a trove of documents on his finances earlier that day.

Released by the House Ways and Means Committee, the returns cover the years from 2015 to 2020, amount to nearly 6,000 pages, and promise to shed light on the finances of the Trump family and the complex web of companies and entities under their control.

The information that has emerged from the returns thus far is mundane. The New York Times discovered in the documents that Trump made no charitable contributions in 2020 – breaking with his policy of donating his presidential salary in the years beforehand.

The newspaper also discovered that Trump refused a tax refund of $13.5 million in 2020. Although the former president reported no taxable income that year, he took only $5.5 million from the refund, carrying the remainder over to 2021.

“The ‘Trump’ tax returns once again show how proudly successful I have been and how I have been able to use tax depreciation and various other tax deductions as an incentive for creating thousands of jobs and magnificent structures and enterprises,” he said in a statement. 

The Ways and Means Committee released some highlights from the returns earlier this month, showing that Trump and his wife, Melania, made liberal use of tax credits and deductions to pay $750 in tax in 2016 and 2017, and $0 in 2020.

In his statement, Trump described one situation in which he wrote off tens of millions of dollars in losses at one of his hotels in Washington DC, before selling the property for $400 million.

Trump also cautioned that the Democrats’ release of his filings would be “a dangerous two-way street.” While an individual’s tax returns are normally protected by privacy laws, the committee successfully argued before the Supreme Court that releasing Trump’s filings was necessary to shape future tax laws.

Trump is not the only Republican suggesting that this precedent could be used against Democrats in the future. “In the long run, Democrats will come to regret this,” the Ways and Means Committee’s top Republican, Rep. Kevin Brady, stated. 

Conservative pundits have already called on the GOP – which takes power in the House of Representatives in January – to obtain and publish the tax records of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former President Barack Obama, and coronavirus czar Anthony Fauci, all of whom increased their wealth while in office.

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