Just make sure the top sheets have something written on them...
Laura has a great front-page entry on Trump's refusal to release his tax returns (Trump refuses to release tax returns before November). It really is typically Trump. Of course, he's above all others and excuses are the only thing that can spurt out of his mouth at any given moment. There are a number of presidential candidates this year who have released their tax returns from 2014 and earlier. I thought this site was handy dandy for checking to see who has released their returns and how many years of returns have been released — Tax History Project.
Of course, it's up to every individual voter out there to figure out how important such a document release is when they're deciding on whom they would vote for President. Jeb Bush released tax returns from 1981 to 2014; definitely the most any candidate for 2016 has released (PolitiFact). Just behind that total was Hillary, releasing tax returns from 2000 up to 2014.
Does this really matter? Well, you be the judge...
All told, the 2016 presidential campaign has been an abysmal one so far for tax transparency, according to tax experts and government watchdog groups.
“It has been pretty bad,” said Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen, an advocacy group. “To tell the truth, it’s really only Hillary that’s been fully complying with that expectation that the candidates release all their tax returns. All the other candidates have released just the summary pages . . . and not the details.”
Without the full returns, voters can’t see such items as sources of income, which tax breaks they claimed, what they might have deducted as business expenses or how much they gave to charity, said Joseph Thorndike, director of the Tax History Project at Tax Analysts and author of the “Politics of Federal Taxation” column for Tax Notes magazine.
Being an insurgent candidate fighting for truth, justice, and the Republican American way, it's very strange that Trump doesn't feel like releasing any tax returns whatsoever. Mitt Romney called on Trump to release his tax returns earlier this year (Huffington Post) but talk about using the wrong messenger for that message. Romney himself dragged his feet as long as he could in 2012 before releasing a couple years' worth just to get people off of his back. No one will mistake the Mittster for a tax transparency guy.
The disparity in the amount of information released by Democrats and Republicans when it comes to tax returns (Efile) is fascinating. If you hit that link, you'll see the following:
Nixon (1969-1972) - 4 years
Carter (1977-1979) - 3 years
Reagan (1981-1987) - 7 years
H. W. Bush (1989-1991) - 3 years
Bill Clinton (1992-1999) - 8 years
W. Bush (2000-2007) - 8 years
Obama (2000-2014) - 15 years
Biden (1998-2014) - 17 years
Cheney (2000-2007) - 8 years
McCain (2006-2007) - 2 years
Palin (2006-2007) - 2 years
Romney (2010-2011) - 2 years
Ryan (2010-2011) - 2 years
Hillary Clinton (2008-2014) - 7 years
I’ve put the serving Presidents in boldface. For a political party that claims all sorts of superiority on the issue of taxes, they don’t really like to show the public much of their hand. Senator McCain actually established a new minimum of tax transparency with his release of just two years worth of tax returns during his presidential run. Romney followed suit in 2012, using the excuse that he was following the long-standing tradition of releasing only two years… which was, of course, only established with McCain’s campaign. [Does anyone see an analogy here between this excuse for minimal tax information release and the “long-standing” tradition of the Senate’s not confirming justices in a president’s final year lol.]
There are plenty of explanations for the disparity in tax return releases. Typically, anyone who has been President releases more years of their tax returns for public consumption and viewing. You can't expect President H. W. Bush to release a bunch of returns having only served one term as president. And the same goes for the various Republican candidates in bygone years - just two years each… and probably just enough to get the media to see another bright, shiny object to talk about and thereby forget the whole tax thing. But it's anything but ordinary (FactCheck):
Mitt Romney says he is following the “precedent” set by John McCain in releasing just two years of tax returns. That’s accurate. But McCain, the 2008 GOP nominee, bucked the trend of other recent presidential candidates.
Having presidential candidates release their tax returns is a nice hat-tip to transparency (Mental Floss):
According to PolitiFact, a non-partisan Pulitzer Prize Winning fact-checking site, the vast majority of candidates who have run for president or vice president in the last thirty-five years have indeed released their tax returns. Of the thirty-four candidates who ran during that time period, only seven—Jerry Brown, Pat Buchanan, Mike Huckabee, Steve Forbes, Rudy Giuliani, Richard Lugar, and Ralph Nader—have refused to release their tax returns altogether. Most released their records in the late spring. Even Romney’s dad, George Romney, released his tax returns when he ran against Richard Nixon in the Republican primary in 1968.
And considering every presidential candidate nowadays has a tax plan for their administration (Tax Foundation), it's pretty informative and useful (and I would argue, necessary) to see a candidate's earlier tax returns. Look, I understand there are “working class” voters out there in whose eyes Trump can do no wrong. There’s no use trying to convince those people. But a good portion of the electorate is reasonable and may not want to delve into Trump’s tax returns on their own but would appreciate news that there is nothing unusual in them. Even the National Review got in on the act (National Review):
A political party that didn’t demand the public release of Donald Trump’s tax returns could be committing electoral suicide. In his 40-year business career, he has assembled an empire of great complexity along with a serial record of credibility problems. In other words, he often “makes stuff up.” This is a man who said, under oath, in a 2008 libel suit he later lost: “My net worth fluctuates, and it goes up and down with the markets and with attitudes and with feelings, even my own feelings.”
...
Republican voters, GOP officials, and all Americans should demand that Donald Trump release his tax returns, something he refuses to do with the flimsiest of excuses. If he doesn’t release them, no one should be surprised if a leak of the juiciest details comes from the Obama administration before the November election.
“Feelings… nothing more than feelings.” I think it's a hilarious possibility that someone in the Obama administration would leak that kind of information. Talk about projecting Republican dirty tricks on the Obama administration and IRS. Anyways, Shawn Tully at Fortune Magazine has a good take on it from earlier this year (Fortune Magazine):
It will be a tough choice for Trump: Keep playing the rebellious outsider and refuse, or comply and possibly unmask that he’s worth a fraction of what he’s been saying, and is really guilty of what Romney wasn’t, paying little or no federal income taxes. Maybe Trump can convince his loyalists that tax secrecy is part of skewering the “establishment.” The argument will be a harder sell with the independent and mainstream Republicans who pay a lot of taxes, and want proof their leaders do the same.
Republicans, who love to play the victim and wonder aloud why others get so many advantages and why they are supposed to foot the bill on so many things in our country, would probably not appreciate a presidential nominee who has paid little to no taxes using every little trick in the book. Can someone be oh-so authentic… a straight-talker and lie about their finances; while running for the highest elected office in the land? An office that influences tax and money policy across the globe? The prospects of handing Trump that much power and authority should make even the most undecided voter uneasy, if not queasy. Trump will do to Republican fantasies of monetary righteousness what George W. Bush did to Republican notions of foreign policy expertise — he will transmogrify the voters and the powers-that-be in the GOP into inept and dangerous fools for nominating this man to be their presidential nominee.
And behind Door No. 5 is… Mr Question Mark
I'm sure there are voters out there for whom this whole tax return issue will be meaningless. But considering the release of tax returns is a typical and expected thing to do nowadays I think we can depend on our traditional media to eventually lock in to this and go hunting for why Trump is so reluctant to release his returns. After all, they may not be interested in the truth but they're always willing to chase a story with high ratings at the end and this treasure hunt promises to be the yuuuuuugest scavenger hunt of all. Just desserts for a man who is only too happy to lend his name out to help bilk your grandma and grandpa of their lifetime earnings on real estate projects that eventually go belly up (Tampa Bay Times).
Ian Reifowitz is right. Give Mr Drumpf the birther treatment and swift-tax him. By the end of this campaign, I hope his name and brand are so sullied that I will never see a real estate project (or anything else) bearing his name going up anywhere ever again.
