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The tax returns are here! The tax returns are here!

I agree that the returns should not have been made public unless there was a specific reason to do so. This is purely vindictive politics and the day will come when Democrats realize it was kind of a bad idea.
Disagree. Trump chose to make his life “public” when hr ran for POTUS. Ever since Nixon, these records have become public. Quit your phuquin’ whining. If you don’t wanna release your tax records, simply do not run for public office. Pretty easy.
 
Right, they didn’t approve or disapprove it.
Look, the House Dems can do what they want. I just think releasing Trumps returns under the guise of oversight is wrong.
You are entitled to that belief just as I am entitled to the belief that releasing them is not just right but necessary given the dangerous nature of Trump.
 
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Disagree. Trump chose to make his life “public” when hr ran for POTUS. Ever since Nixon, these records have become public. Quit your phuquin’ whining. If you don’t wanna release your tax records, simply do not run for public office. Pretty easy.
Again, it’s customary but not obligatory.

The Ways and Means Committee requested the returns under the pretext of reviewing how the IRS processes the returns of Presidents and Vice-Presidents.

What exactly was the legal imperative for releasing them to the public?
 
You are entitled to that belief just as I am entitled to the belief that releasing them is not just right but necessary given the dangerous nature of Trump.
Every entity that has jurisdiction over Trump’s actions already had access to the returns. Releasing them to the general public accomplished nothing in terms of making us ‘safe from Trump’.

There was absolutely zero legal imperative to release them to the public. It was strictly politics.
 
Again, it’s customary but not obligatory.

The Ways and Means Committee requested the returns under the pretext of reviewing how the IRS processes the returns of Presidents and Vice-Presidents.

What exactly was the legal imperative for releasing them to the public?
Why not? “We the people” have the right to know where and how our chosen leaders invest and spend their money. It hurts no one except those who might have something to hide. Sorry. I see absolutely nothing wrong with it. If you wanna scatter the cockroaches TJ, shine some light on them.
 
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Why not? “We the people” have the right to know where and how our chosen leaders invest and spend their money. It hurts no one except those who might have something to hide. Sorry. I see absolutely nothing wrong with it. If you wanna scatter the cockroaches TJ, shine some light on them.
If you’re going to violate privacy laws then you need a slightly better justification than “why not?”.
 
Every entity that has jurisdiction over Trump’s actions already had access to the returns. Releasing them to the general public accomplished nothing in terms of making us ‘safe from Trump’.

There was absolutely zero legal imperative to release them to the public. It was strictly politics.
Americans deserve to know who they are electing. If that's politics, then I am all for it. What we don't need is more secrets, especially from corrupt candidates like Trump.
 
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I believe the donald is up that well known tributary without a proper means of locomotion. Couldn't happen to a better corrupt lying cheating weak chicken crook.
 
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You are entitled to that belief just as I am entitled to the belief that releasing them is not just right but necessary given the dangerous nature of Trump.
Of course. I’m not trying to (and doubt I will) convince you differently. Just stating my position.

I hate the guy and if he keeled over today I’d bake a cake tonight. This just isn’t right, IMO. And plays right into Trump’s claims they are out to get him, by any means necessary.
 
That is NO violation of any phuquin’ privacy law. The law is...if you run for public office, you need to release your taxes ....if this is objectionable, then do not run for public office. Again....pretty easy.
There. Is. No. Law.

Read the House Committee’s report - they recommended making it a law.
 
There. Is. No. Law.

Read the House Committee’s report - they recommended making it a law.
That’s fine. Then ts the “expectation”...and suddenly Trump feels he is above “the expectation”....Trump’s the one who started this bilkshit fight as a candidate....and Congress took his bait. But phuque Trump’s “privacy” argument....once you enter the public arena, you lose some (if not a lot) of your privacy. This is one reason why many choose not to go into public service. We all understand that Congress can act immaturely abd childishly....but so can individuals. Unfortunately for Trump he really passed off a lot of the wrong folks and now they are going to extract their pound of flesh. You would have thought that the man who wrote “The Art of the Deal” might have done a better job of negotiating here.
 
That’s fine. Then ts the “expectation”...and suddenly Trump feels he is above “the expectation”....Trump’s the one who started this bilkshit fight as a candidate....and Congress took his bait. But phuque Trump’s “privacy” argument....once you enter the public arena, you lose some (if not a lot) of your privacy. This is one reason why many choose not to go into public service. We all understand that Congress can act immaturely abd childishly....but so can individuals. Unfortunately for Trump he really passed off a lot of the wrong folks and now they are going to extract their pound of flesh. You would have thought that the man who wrote “The Art of the Deal” might have done a better job of negotiating here.
Ok…
 
This actually allows for the release not blocks it.

"The law is clear that the House Ways and Means Committee can now make Trump’s tax returns public if a majority of the committee members vote to do so.

The relevant statute, Section 6103(f) of the Internal Revenue Code, instructs the IRS to release otherwise-confidential tax returns or return information to three congressional tax committees—the Senate Finance Committee, the House Ways and Means Committee, and the Joint Committee on Taxation—upon written request from the chair of any of those panels. The statute also instructs the IRS to release returns or return information to other congressional committees under a narrower set of circumstances."

 
I love tax season. Hopefully, I'll only owe $2K instead of $4,700 like I did last year. :cool:
 
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I'll leave Formerly out of this comment, I think he is sincere, but you see the GQP playbook being run today. The point isn't to discuss what is in the returns, it's to obfuscate for a news cycle or two, and to play the victim card. You have a couple of posters relentlessly keeping this thread off the topic because they know what's in the returns are bad for their party. Poor TJ is going to pass out if he doesn't take a breather.
Gotta keep protecting Orange Jesus. Even if he did enter the public arena, and even if the taxpayers should have confidence in their leaders making decisions in their best interest, versus private interests.
 
We are all a bunch of suckers. Trump paid less in taxes than any of us. Donations and loans to his kids.

Here are the takeaways.
1. Trump leaks money like a sieve. The only thing that has kept him afloat for the last 30 years is selling off assets he inherited from Fred piece by piece.
2. He's a lying bum when it comes to charitable contributions.
3. He's scamming the system. It's a bad system to begin with, but he relentlessly lies on his returns.
4. The loans to the kids are laughable, and a touch of illegality in some of them. Especially some monies given to Ivanka. Eric and Little Don are morons, and I can see them needing a handout, but Ivanka and Jared are rich.
5. The biggest takeaway, and why I support the returns being released, is that they show how easily manipulated the tax laws are if you are rich.
 
This actually allows for the release not blocks it.

"The law is clear that the House Ways and Means Committee can now make Trump’s tax returns public if a majority of the committee members vote to do so.

The relevant statute, Section 6103(f) of the Internal Revenue Code, instructs the IRS to release otherwise-confidential tax returns or return information to three congressional tax committees—the Senate Finance Committee, the House Ways and Means Committee, and the Joint Committee on Taxation—upon written request from the chair of any of those panels. The statute also instructs the IRS to release returns or return information to other congressional committees under a narrower set of circumstances."

The law allows the Treasury Department to provide the returns to those three entities you mentioned. It does not give those entities carte blanche to do whatever they want with the returns.
 
Hoping to see Schiff sweating and stammering on the witness stand in 2023.
Yeah, I'll bet Jim Jordan gets bitch slapped around by Schiff just like Hillary Clinton bitch slapped him around.
Schiff is an experienced former prosecutor. He's a serious person who if he ever were to be questioned in public would make Team Red look stupid. But, you and the rest of the cult would find it validating I suppose.
 
I'll leave Formerly out of this comment, I think he is sincere, but you see the GQP playbook being run today. The point isn't to discuss what is in the returns, it's to obfuscate for a news cycle or two, and to play the victim card. You have a couple of posters relentlessly keeping this thread off the topic because they know what's in the returns are bad for their party. Poor TJ is going to pass out if he doesn't take a breather.
Gotta keep protecting Orange Jesus. Even if he did enter the public arena, and even if the taxpayers should have confidence in their leaders making decisions in their best interest, versus private interests.
You can include me in the criticism, I’m good with that. There are some here who will defend Trump to the end but I think there are several of us who just don’t think it’s right. I’m comfortable in saying I would hold this view regardless of whose returns they were and which party was releasing them.
 
The law allows the Treasury Department to provide the returns to those three entities you mentioned. It does not give those entities carte blanche to do whatever they want with the returns.
Don't ever stop being you, TJ.
 
Not linking, but as you can guess Trump has released a statement saying the tax returns prove he's super rich, super successful, and created thousands of jobs because of his exceptional business acumen.
 
This actually allows for the release not blocks it.

"The law is clear that the House Ways and Means Committee can now make Trump’s tax returns public if a majority of the committee members vote to do so.

The relevant statute, Section 6103(f) of the Internal Revenue Code, instructs the IRS to release otherwise-confidential tax returns or return information to three congressional tax committees—the Senate Finance Committee, the House Ways and Means Committee, and the Joint Committee on Taxation—upon written request from the chair of any of those panels. The statute also instructs the IRS to release returns or return information to other congressional committees under a narrower set of circumstances."

Here’s a really good analysis by the same blogger. Pretty much sums up where I’m at.
Here’s his conclusion:

To be sure, these considerations are less compelling in the case of a president, who already lives in a fishbowl. And in the president’s case, countervailing considerations support a norm of tax return disclosure. In a 2017 Yale Law Journal Forum article, I highlighted four reasons why presidents should make their returns public: to bolster taxpayer morale, to aid voters in evaluating whether the president’s tax policies are motivated by self-interest, to shine a light on nontax conflicts of interest that might affect the president, and to serve as a check on improper presidential influence over the IRS. In my view, these countervailing considerations are strong enough to justify a federal statute requiring presidents to release their returns. Every president since Jimmy Carter—with the exception of Trump—has done so voluntarily.

But a statute—adopted after robust debate—is different from a decision by members of one party on one committee in one chamber to release an individual’s returns on their own. At the very least, one would hope that the Ways and Means Committee would conscientiously consider taxpayer confidentiality interests before plowing ahead along an unusual procedural route. Yet one searches Tuesday’s report in vain for any evidence that members analyzed the implications of full disclosure.

A high-level summary would have sufficed to show that—notwithstanding Trump’s campaign trail claim that his returns were “very beautiful”—his filings contained items that should have merited further IRS scrutiny, such as a very large net operating loss carryforward that wiped away years of taxable income. We don’t need to know, for example, precisely how much interest income Trump received from his adult children on intrafamily loans in order to conclude that the IRS’s failure to audit Trump for his first two years in office was potentially consequential.

Moreover, it’s not clear why the committee decided to include Trump’s tax year 2020 returns in the data dump—except for the scintillating fact that Trump paid $0 of federal income tax for that year (which was probably not unusual for owners of hotel properties at the height of the coronavirus pandemic). Trump’s tax year 2020 returns weren’t due until after he left the White House, and none of Trump’s predecessors have released returns for their last full tax year in office. Obama didn’t release his tax year 2016 returns; George W. Bush didn’t release his tax year 2008 returns; Bill Clinton didn’t release his tax year 2000 returns; and so on. Ways and Means Democrats are applying a different standard to Trump than past presidents applied to themselves.

The report also says nothing about the potential downstream consequences of the disclosure, which may well set off an interparty tit-for-tat. Granted, Republicans won’t gain much mileage from releasing President Biden’s tax returns when they take control of the Ways and Means Committee, because Biden releases his returns each year. But the Wall Street Journal editorial board is already making noises about Hunter Biden’s tax returns, which may soon displace Hunter Biden’s laptop as a perennial object of GOP obsession. Or House Republicans may target the tax filings of the Ways and Means Democrats who voted to disclose Trump’s returns—many of whom haven’t deigned to release their own. A scenario in which the two parties weaponize individual tax returns for political ends is not a happy scenario for the federal tax system. Tuesday’s decision doesn’t guarantee that we’ll tumble down that slippery slope, but it may well nudge the nation in that direction.

“The public must have confidence that our tax laws apply evenly and justly to all, regardless of power or position,” the Ways and Means Committee wrote in its Tuesday report. As part of that, the public ought to be able to trust that the IRS will follow through on its promise to audit the president each year—and the committee deserves credit for revealing that this promise wasn’t fulfilled. But by the same token, the public ought to be able to trust that Congress—the body that wields the awesome power to tax—will think long and hard before exposing a private citizen’s tax returns to public view, even if that private citizen happens to be a former president of the United States with aspirations to occupy the White House again. And even when—at the end of the day—lawmakers decide that public disclosure is warranted, the minimum we should demand of them is that they recognize the weight of what they’re doing.

In short, the IRS appears to have fallen down on the job. But Democrats on the Ways and Means Committee—who promised to carry out a thorough review of the IRS’s presidential audit program, yet instead made a hair-trigger decision to release Trump’s tax returns—fell down on the job as well. And as a consequence, a pox on both Trump and the IRS has become a pox on the House too.


https://www.lawfareblog.com/house-d...-taxes-highlights-irss-failures—and-their-own
 
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The law allows the Treasury Department to provide the returns to those three entities you mentioned. It does not give those entities carte blanche to do whatever they want with the returns.
I'm not talking carte blanche. I'm talking releasing the returns to the public. And the law clearly gives Congress to power to do so if they wish. Aren't you wondering why the courts won't step in to block the release?
 
You can include me in the criticism, I’m good with that. There are some here who will defend Trump to the end but I think there are several of us who just don’t think it’s right. I’m comfortable in saying I would hold this view regardless of whose returns they were and which party was releasing them.
The POTUS isn't you and me, and I pay my taxes. I'm okay with a tax cheat being called out. It's people like you and me who cover the tab for the cheats like Trump.
 
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