Former President Donald Trump was once harshly criticized for not releasing his tax returns, but no one seems to care much anymore.
Neither he nor his running mate JD Vance have made their records public, and there are no signs they plan to do so, although they could shed light on potential conflicts of interest and personal interests they have in legislation before Congress.
In years past, that would have been a big deal — it was a big deal in Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns. But it’s barely mentioned in this year’s election campaign or in the news media, even though it’s a matter of toss up and lawmakers will have an extended debate next year about the fate of trillions of dollars in tax cuts.
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris announced their returns in April.
Trump’s steadfast refusal, and non-reaction to that non-disclosure of the dog that didn’t bark, amounts to yet another blow to the decades-old tradition of presidential candidates in both parties voluntarily returning.
It’s also a victory for Trump, said Steve Rosenthal, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center, as Trump has outlasted his critics.
“This issue, which was one of the biggest in the 2016 campaign, is now one of the smallest,” Rosenthal said. “Trump has generally succeeded in removing tax return disclosure from the political debate.”
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Trump could personally benefit from some of the issues before lawmakers next year, such as what to do about a lucrative but controversial tax break for unincorporated companies — like the ones that make up a large part of Trump’s financial portfolio. This deduction expires at the end of next year.
Both Trump and Vance have released other disclosure forms showing that they own significant amounts of cryptocurrencies, another issue that lawmakers will likely grapple with next year.
It’s hard to know what other potential conflicts of interest Trump might have because, while some of his old filings have surfaced, none of his files have been seen since he left the White House.
It’s a curious addition to all the attention that used to surround the issue of Trump’s return.
The New York Times turned the 2020 campaign on its head with a scathing report on Trump’s documents, largely from years before he took office, after he won a Pulitzer in 2019 for an expose of Trump and his father’s tax maneuvers in the eighties and nineties.
A former IRS contractor, outraged by Trump’s opposition, is now in jail for leaking his tax information to the newspaper and other wealthy people’s information to ProPublica.
And House Democrats fought in court for more than three years to seize Trump’s returns before releasing the files from 2015 to 2020 in December 2022.
Harris spokesman Joseph Costello said: “Vice President Harris voluntarily released 20 years of tax returns. Why doesn’t Trump want that?”
His secrecy hasn’t received much attention this year, perhaps in part because there are so many other controversies surrounding him. Previous reporting showed a clear pattern of Trump paying little or nothing in taxes, thanks in part to aggressive planning.
But without more recent returns, people like Rosenthal are left wondering what kind of conflicts of interest Trump may have developed since leaving the White House.
“What happened after he left office? What new opportunities opened up for him?” Rosenthal said.
Trump and Vance have released required financial disclosure forms that outline broadly where their money is, though they say nothing about taxes. Trump has lined up a number of limited liability companies, such as Mar-a-Lago Club LLC, that benefit from a special 20 percent deduction for non-corporate corporations, known in tax circles as 199A, which he signed into law in 2017 has signed. for another ten years would cost almost $700 billion.
Trump also reported owning between $1 million and $5 million in cryptocurrency, and Vance as much as $500,000 in bitcoin, which critics say takes advantage of tax loopholes that should be closed. For example, people who own virtual currencies have more freedom to manipulate losses to erase their tax bills than those who sell stocks.
Trump also has large holdings in individual stocks, and some want him to unilaterally cut capital gains taxes by indexing them for inflation, something his administration had seriously considered.
It is conceivable that, should Trump win the election and Democrats retake the House of Representatives, Democrats could again force disclosure of his returns, using an arcane law that allows the head of Congress’ tax committees to anyone, even if there is no indication that this could happen in the future. out.
Democrats introduced legislation last year to legally require presidential candidates to submit their returns, but that went nowhere.
All of this leaves tax historian Joseph Thorndike wondering about the future of the voluntary disclosure tradition.
This used to happen without much fuss in either party, but he says releasing tax returns has increasingly become a party political issue.
“Maybe it’s like that line from ‘The Princess Bride’: It’s not dead, it’s just mostly dead,” Thorndike said. “It is anyone’s guess at this point how this will turn out.”
“But we must recognize that voluntary traditions are fragile.”
