Washington, Dec 20 – A parliamentary committee of the United States Congress decided on Tuesday to publish a report on former President Donald Trump’s tax returns (2017-2021), thus closing a dispute that dates back to 2019.
The House Ways and Means committee met behind closed doors to rule on those documents, which span six years, mainly from the time the former Republican president was in the White House.
The body, controlled by the Democrats, finally decided, by 24 votes in favor to 16 against, to make the reports public along with “additional materials” among which can be found the former president’s tax returns, although it is not clear, For now, when will it happen?
Trump had requested the Supreme Court that his tax returns be kept secret and not handed over to that commission, but the highest court in the United States rejected his request on November 22 and the Treasury Department ended up handing them over to him. .
The Ways and Means committee had said in November that if the Supreme Court had not ruled in his favor, it would have been detrimental to Congress by preventing it from pursuing any investigation whenever allegations arise that he is politically motivated.
The battle over those statements dates back to 2019, when the Ways and Means committee issued a legal subpoena to access that information as part of its investigation into possible tax violations by Trump.
He based the petition on a 1924 law that allows the leaders of certain congressional committees, including Ways and Means, to ask the US Treasury and Treasury Secretary to release any taxpayer’s tax returns.
Trump was the first US president since Gerald Ford (1974-1977) who did not publish his tax return every year, a tradition that his predecessors considered part of their duty of transparency and accountability to the people.
“You can’t get much out of a tax return, but it’s illegal to post it if it’s not yours!” Trump said Monday on his Truth Social network.
The former Republican president had alleged in the past that his statements were subject to an audit by the US Internal Revenue Service. (Treasury), although numerous legal experts assured that no regulation prevented him from disclosing them if he wanted to.