House committee has been given access to Trump’s tax returns

The House Budget Committee gained access to Donald Trump’s tax returns after a years-long legal battle with the former president, who called the actions of the Democratic-led committee “politically motivated.”

“The U.S. Treasury Department has complied with last week’s court order,” a department spokesman wrote in a statement emailed late last Wednesday night. The spokesman declined to say whether the committee had accessed the documents.

The budget committee obtained the tax returns after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that they were available. The committee requested Trump’s tax returns from 2015 to 2020, which committee members say should make clear whether the IRS is properly auditing the president’s returns and whether a new law on the subject is needed.

The committee will have little time to do its job because Republicans will take a majority of seats in the House of Representatives as early as January.

Donald Trump, who began his third consecutive race for the presidency on Nov. 15, has fought hard to keep his declarations from being disclosed.

He was the first president in four decades not to release his tax returns as he sought to keep details of his fortune and the operations of his Trump Organization secret. Presidential candidates from the major parties have long published their declarations, even though they are not required by law to do so.

Trump, who served as president from 2017 to 2021, reported large losses from his businesses in the years leading up to it. Hundreds of millions of dollars in income, according to media reports and court testimony about his finances, made up for those losses. This allowed Trump to pay very little in taxes.

The main question facing the committee is what happens to the results they receive when control of the House of Representatives shifts from Democrats to Republicans in January. The first time the House Budget Committee requested Trump’s tax returns was in 2019.

Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee, the equivalent of the House Budget Committee, have been considering their options for dealing with Trump’s tax returns, a source told Reuters on condition of anonymity. Democrats won a majority in the Senate in November’s midterm elections.