Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at a rally to support Republican candidates ahead of midterm elections, in Dayton, Ohio, November 7, 2022.
Gaelen Morse | Reuters
Only one of Donald Trump‘s individual federal income tax returns began being audited by the IRS when he served as president, despite the tax agency being mandated to conduct such examinations, a House committee said in a new report Tuesday evening.
That IRS audit of Trump’s 2016 income tax return was not completed by the time he left office in January 2021, the report by the Ways and Means Committee found.
And neither of two Trump-related business entities that the IRS told the committee were part of the mandatory examination program were designated for an audit in five of the six years covered by an investigation, according to the report.
And in that sixth year, in 2017, there is “no indication” the entities tax returns were designated for audit, the report found.
The report was released shortly after the Democratic-led panel voted along party lines to authorize the public release of redacted copies of Trump’s federal tax returns and those of eight related business entities in coming days.
The report found that when Trump was in the White House, the IRS failed to designate for mandatory audit Trump’s tax return for 2015, when he was running for president, and then again for the returns filed for the 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020 tax years.
“The former President’s individual income tax returns filed in 2018, 2019, and 2020 were not selected for
examination until after he left office and only the 2016 tax return was subject to a mandatory
examination,” the report said.
Trump has refused for years to voluntarily disclose his returns to the public, claiming they were being audited by the Internal Revenue Service.
The tax agency in 1977 adopted an internal policy that supposedly requires mandatory audits of sitting presidents and vice presidents.
But the report said that since then, “Congress has been told nothing about the operation of
this program.”
“Until recently, the Committee did not know for certain whether the IRS conducted these
mandatory examinations and, if so, whether they were in accordance with this policy, thorough,
and fair,” the report said.
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