Today, U.S. Representative Bill Pascrell, Jr. (NJ-09), a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, sent a letter to President Donald Trump calling for release of his tax returns for the last ten years in the name of transparency. The letter responds to a recent, inaccurate claim by White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders that an automatic audit was preventing disclosure of the President's tax returns. The need to see the President’s tax returns has taken on a new urgency since the tax cut bill passed by Congress this week stands to personally benefit the President and his family.

"I was disturbed when White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders claimed, as a reason for not releasing your tax returns, that “the president’s taxes, no matter who the president is, actually immediately go under audit after being filed.” Nothing about the automatic audit prevents presidential tax returns from being released," Rep. Pascrell wrote. "On April 15, 2016, President Barack Obama released his tax returns to the American public even though it was subject to the same mandatory audit provisions. In fact, almost every single president since Nixon has released his tax returns for every single year in office."

Rep. Pascrell has been fastidiously pursuing a Congressional review of President Trump's tax returns since his February 1 letter to Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady (R-TX) requesting the chairman exercise the committee's authority to review such documents. Current law allows the House Committee on Ways and Means, the Senate Committee on Finance, and the Joint Committee on Taxation to make such a request to allow members of the committee to review the tax documents of any individual in closed session and consider their public release. This move would allow for important Congressional oversight of potential conflicts of interest, which up to this point has not been possible because of the President’s refusal to release his tax returns.

The full text of the letter to President Trump is below.

December 20, 2017

President Donald Trump
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear President Trump,

The Committee on Ways and Means oversees our nation’s tax laws and has a Constitutional duty to ensure they are being executed fairly. As a member of that committee, I take this responsibility seriously. Tax returns provide a clear picture of an individual’s financial positions and interests, including income and how much they pay in taxes, how much they give to charity, whether they have any foreign accounts, whether they comply with provisions laid out in our tax code, and whether they have been audited correctly by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

At present, you have chosen to break with forty years of precedent by refusing to release your tax returns to the public. Every major Presidential candidate since Richard Nixon, with the exception of President Gerald Ford who released a summary of tax data, has released his or her tax returns for public review – until now.  

As someone who pressured President Obama to release his birth certificate, I am surprised you refuse to shed light on your own background in this widely accepted way. In fact, in 2011 you told ABC: “I may tie my tax returns – I’d love to give my tax returns – I may tie my tax returns into Obama’s birth certificate.”  President Obama released his birth certificate; your tax returns remained hidden.

In 2014, you stated, “If I decide to run for office, I’ll produce my tax returns, absolutely. I would love to do that.”   In January 2016, you told NBC that “we’re working on that right now. I have very big returns, as you know, and I have everything all approved and beautiful, and we’ll be working on that over the next period of time. . . . At the appropriate time, you’ll be very satisfied.”

You later changed your story and claimed that you could not release your tax returns because you were being audited by the IRS. There is no prohibition against releasing your tax returns during an audit. Further, you have provided no evidence of being under audit. More recently, you told the Economist you might not ever make tax documents public. 

I was disturbed when White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders claimed, as a reason for not releasing your tax returns, that “the president’s taxes, no matter who the president is, actually immediately go under audit after being filed.” Nothing about the automatic audit prevents presidential tax returns from being released. On April 15, 2016, President Barack Obama released his tax returns to the American public even though it was subject to the same mandatory audit provisions. In fact, almost every single president since Nixon has released his tax returns for every single year in office.

The need to review the contents of your tax returns in particular is even more urgent considering you are the first President in modern history with 564 financial positions in both domestic and international companies. You have chosen to keep an ownership stake in your businesses, despite being advised by the Office of Government Ethics to divest. Furthermore, you have been pushing for changes to the tax code under which you personally stand to benefit. Based on a two-page document from your 2005 tax returns leaked to the press, you would have benefited by $31 million from the elimination of the Alternative Minimum Tax alone, one of the key components of the Republican tax bill just passed by Congress.

Congress added to law the authority of the tax-writing committees to obtain tax returns in 1924. This change to Section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) followed the Teapot Dome scandal, in which Congress recognized the need for oversight into potential conflicts of interest in the Executive branch. The 6103 provision was used to obtain and release President Nixon’s tax returns in 1974, and more recently in 2014 to release taxpayer information of conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.  

Mr. President, I urge you to release copies of your tax returns for the last ten years so that the American public might understand possible conflicts of interest between your governmental and personal responsibilities and help them understand how the tax legislation you are advocating would impact your bottom line. If you do not either release your returns or consent to examination of such returns by the Ways and Means Committee, I have urged the Chairman of the Committee, pursuant to Section 6103(f)(1) of the IRC, to submit a request to the Secretary of the Treasury for copies of your federal tax returns. 

The American people deserve a government that is transparent, ethical, and free from conflicts of interest. Providing oversight of the Executive Branch is a fundamental duty of Congress enshrined in the Constitution. Should you refuse to release your tax returns to the public, you will leave Congress no choice but to take matters into its own hands.

Sincerely,

Bill Pascrell, Jr.
Member of Congress