The IRS “dozes off” when dealing with the former President Donald TrumpSenate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said Wednesday.
“The Presidential Audit Program Is Broken,” Wyden said in a statement vowed to work to pass legislation to reform that decades-old program.
His assessment comes after the House Ways and Means Committee reported that The IRS just started a mandatory audit Trump’s personal income tax returns during his four years in the White House – although the agency’s rules require an annual audit of the president’s tax returns.
The only required audit of Trump’s 2016 tax returns was not completed while he was in office, according to a House panel investigation, which concluded that the president’s audit program was “good enough.” especially inactive” under the Trump administration.
“There is no justification for not conducting the necessary presidential audits until a congressional investigation is conducted,” Wyden’s statement said.
“I have more questions about the extent to which resource issues or fear of political retaliation from the White House have contributed to the flaws here,” the senator added.
The IRS did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on Wyden’s statement.
The Ways and Means Committee’s report on the presidential audit program was released after the panel’s Democratic majority voted to release redacted copies Trump’s federal income tax returns. That vote comes after a years-long legal battle with Trump, who has struggled to keep his tax information out of the committee’s reach.
Trump broke with decades of election precedent by refusing to make his tax returns public, both when he ran for president in 2016 and after winning that election. At the time, Trump claimed that he was restricted from releasing his tax returns due to an IRS audit, although fact-checkers have reported that he could still have released them.
Supreme Court last month reject Trump’s final bid to prevent Congress from collecting years of its taxes. On Tuesday, another report came out Trump’s general tax returns with his wife, Melania Trump, for tax years from 2015 to 2020. That report, prepared by the Joint Committee on Taxation, shows that Trump and Melania have declared negative income on years of tax returns and filed $0 federal income tax in 2020.
Trump spokesman Steven Cheung has criticized the Democrats’ actions, calling the “unprecedented leak” “proof they are playing a political game they are losing” and calling on them to act. tax returns from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her husband. “If this injustice can happen to President Trump, it can happen to all Americans without cause,” Cheung’s statement said.
Wyden in his statement Wednesday morning argued that Trump’s tax returns “reveal the shortcomings of our tax code and the consequences of Republicans’ decades-long battle to withdraw IRS guts.”
“These are much bigger problems than Donald Trump’s. Trump’s tax returns can look like many other rich people’s tax frauds – hundreds of partnership benefits, questionable deductions and debts can be converted to write off tax liabilities,” Wyden said.
“All of this is completely unregulated as you are more prone to being struck by lightning than having your hundreds of partners audited,” he said.
