The committee voted last week to release the tax returns, but their release was delayed to redact sensitive personal information like Social Security numbers. The returns were obtained by the Democratic-run Ways and Means Committee only a few weeks ago after a protracted legal battle that lasted nearly four years. For example, it noted IRS auditors were investigating multiple so-called large unusual questionable items on Trump’s tax returns for which the regulator wanted Trump to provide supporting evidence to back up his claims. The JCT in its report raised several similar questions. “Total expenses equaling total income is a statistical impossibility,” said Shiel, who added that the figures are not evidence something illegal was done. That left the company with zero income – and nothing to tax. In other words, every single dollar – to the dollar – that the company earned was negated by the company’s expenses, such as payroll, fuel and other items. It also claimed the exact same amount – $42,965 – in expenses. There are also questions about Trump’s returns listing an identical amount of company expenses and income.įor example, in 2017, Trump claimed his business DJT Aerospace LLC, which operates Trump’s personal helicopter, claimed $42,965 in income. “An auditor would want to see payments, loan agreements and interest rates.” “It’s unusual to have interest in round numbers – very rare,” said Martin Sheil, former supervisory special agent for IRS’ Criminal Investigation unit.
That raises the question of whether “the loans were bona fide arm’s length transactions, or whether the transfers were disguised gifts that could trigger gift tax and a disallowance of interest deductions by the related borrowers,” the JCT said in its report. In 2017 to 2019, Trump said he received exactly $24,000 from his son Eric Trump, and Eric paid him $19,605 in interest in 2020. In each year of his presidency, for example, Trump claimed he received exactly $18,000 in interest on a loan he said he gave his daughter Ivanka Trump and $8,715 in interest from his son Donald Trump, Jr. If the interest Trump claims to have charged his children was not at market rate, for example, it could be considered a gift for tax purposes, requiring him to pay a higher tax rate on the money. The JCT argued that an auditor should investigate the loan agreements Trump made with his children, including the interest rates. The Joint Committee on Taxation, which reviewed the returns, flagged that Trump claimed a large number of questionable items on his tax returns, including eyebrow-raising amounts of interest he claims to have received from loans to his children that the bipartisan committee said could indicate Trump was disguising gifts. Trump’s returns also show the former president made several claims that auditors may question. Returns shed light on questionable tax claims Here are key takeaways from the documents reviewed by CNN: The thousands of pages of documents from the former president’s personal and business federal tax returns – which spanned the years 2015 through 2020 – provide a complex web of raw data about Trump’s finances, offering up many questions about his wealth and income that could be pursued both by auditors and Trump’s political opponents. For example, his returns show that he carried forward a $105 million loss in 2015 and $73 million in 2016. They confirm a report issued from the Joint Committee on Taxation that Trump claimed large losses before and throughout his presidency that he carried forward to reduce or practically eliminate his tax burden. The returns, long shrouded in secrecy, were released to the public on Friday by the House Ways and Means Committee, the culmination of a battle over their disclosure that went to the Supreme Court. Six years of Donald Trump’s federal tax returns released on Friday show the former president paid very little in federal income taxes the first and last year of his presidency, claiming huge losses that helped limit his tax bill, among other revelations.
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