Does the president of the United States have to release their tax returns?

Presidents have released their tax returns voluntarily since the 1970s. The practice resulted from the revelation of the paltry amount that President Richard Nixon paid after making deductions for donating his presidential papers. Despite earning a salary of over $200,000, Nixon had paid just $800 and $900 for the tax years 1970 and 1971.

His vice president, Spiro Agnew, was also embroiled in tax a tax scandal that forced him to resign after admitting to tax evasion. 

This prompted the IRS to include a mandatory audit of the president and veep in its manual since 1977. However, the rule was never codified by Congress and is up to the tax agency’s discretion. As such there is absolutely no obligation for the president to release their tax returns.

For Donald trump’s tenure this audit was missed and he never published his returns. Joe Biden has been audited twice so far and released his latest tax information in April of this year.

Trump’s taxes finally revealed

Despite this the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives committee has taken it upon themselves to release the former president’s returns. The documents read into the thousands of pages so expect a bit of time before analysts can get their teeth into all the information.

“We anticipated the IRS would expand the mandatory audit program to account for the complex nature of the former president’s financial situation yet found no evidence of that,” Richard Neal, the Democratic chairman of the ways and means committee, said in a statement. “This is a major failure of the IRS under the prior administration, and certainly not what we had hoped to find.”