Page 121 - Tax Code News Today

Times exposé piece, what were the key takeaways from this actual return? >> theres two things. one is the extent to which the former president trump used the tax code to his benefit. now, you know, that could be very legal. im not sure that we could come to any conclusions about the legality. there are questions that are unanswered. there are a lot of claims that lack documentation, use of charitable contributions or charitable donations, loans to family members that need to be examined. there ...

Years. it wasnt even until april of 2019, when the chairman of our committee, richard neil, sent the letter to the irs, to the treasury department, asking for these returns under section 61 of the tax code. it wasnt all that very day that the first of these returns were flagged for audit. they had simply failed to do that at all. and they never completed any of the so-called mandatory audit of the president of the united states during president trumps term of office, during his tenure as preside...

Did not want any -- working at the irs to have the responsibility to trigger a tax audit of a president and if it was automatic that no president could complain about it, -- until donald trump made it not automatic anymore. >> and remember, he appointed the irs commissioner who failed in his duty to turn over the returns and many other things. we have been very critical of commissioner redding. but there is a larger issue here, lawrence. we have loaded up the tax code with so many favors to so m...

Something has to be done, and of course that leads to the purpose of the inquiry in the first place, to produce legislation to correct this problem. >> so your two headlines here, when you say theres something dramatically wrong here, and you highlight how much the former president did or did not pay in federal taxes, did you see any evidence that suggests illegality? >> you know, that i dont know. to me its hard for me to imagine that its legal to be one of the richest people in america, accord...

Income jumps into 2018 and 2019 and he also paid over a million in federal income taxes those two years then in 2020 losses again and 0 in taxes. whats the storytelling you? >> well, i would love to know if those are real losses. if he actually lost money or if this was either an abuse of the tax code or maybe its a legal use of the tax code, in fact, as there are many loopholes that apply specifically to real estate that maybe should be remedied but it would be interesting to know what his actu...

I dont know if any of this was illegal, but i can tell you this, it doesnt look right to me as a person who studied the tax code for a long time, and thats why we felt it was important to send this information to the congress along with recommendations that we act upon it. a and frankly, i didnt think it was sufficient simply to send our analysis. i personally was very much of the view that we have to send the full documentation so that we dont get into a situation where trumps allies who will p...

Future looks like of the committee if they use this section of the tax code to reloose this information. we expect they will meet today at 3:00 and go into the closed-door session and then have that discussion. after that they will come out of the executive session and they will vote on whether or not to release this information. but it is a significant day. because it really could, if they release some of this information, shed light on the former presidents taxes and whether or not he paid tax...

Some of the political implications. what kind of legal exposure would the release of these tax returns bring for the former president? >> they could expose him to all kinds of liability. consider in new york hes already being investigated for supposedly pumping up his value when he needed loans and decreasing his value when it came time to pay taxes, so thats just one example of the problems, and thats why we generally keep tax returns under lock and key. these are not the sort of things that ar...

Do on turbotax in 15 minutes, right? this is donald trumps returns. under the personal/professional combo umbrella here. this is complicated stuff. and the committee, again, by their own rules and the laws that theyre working under, under the tax code, couldnt really confirm what they were doing with these records until today but as you pointed out in the intro here, the committee goes out of control, they have no grip on this after january 3rd. so time is of the essence here. theres going to be...

In other words, youre committing to your income, youre making a statement. the challenge is that slippery slope. how do we apply this to all americans? because the tax code requires each of us to submit very private financial information to the government every year, and so if released what does that say about that submission? were giving, entrusting it to the government, and then its released and prosecutors, both the state and federal and in this case donald trump, even congressional investiga...