Yep, it's true. Karma is working. He's been after Hillary's emails, so...
No, I didn't know that, but nothing would surprise me when Trump is involved.
Yeah, that's real great. I'm glad Julian is so morally superior he can decide what should be made public.
Great- his excuse about being mid audit is BS because releasing his tax details is more urgent, audit can wait- can't he release last years? past tax returns? WTF
Tax returns are no one's business. Criminal activity by our Secretary of State is everyone's business. Use that smart brain you have.
Why? There is no requirement for candidates to release their tax returns.
If I were Trump I would just say No I am not going to release my returns.
It is not a smart thing to do. It just allows people to look and point and say
He/She did not contribute enough to charity.
He/She paid a lower tax % than their employees.
etc.
Nope I would not do it.
A financial statement isn't a tax return. I don't care if another candidate ever releases a tax return. It is certainly nothing to compare with Hillary and her criminal activity.
Oh? I thought the new media conspiracy was that Trump was in league with Russians for hacking the DNC. I guess not :)
Although it's not the same thing as asking for Hillary's emails because as we know Hillary's emails have never been released to the public and thousands of them were "conveniently" deleted and since the media is in democrats favor we know those emails will NEVER be released.
That's exactly what it is and so true. Human rights should be such a good thing but human rights have always been bought and it's no different for any celebrity or politician. Not to mention the scandals where half the money doesn't even go to the people the charity supposedly helps. You know how much money is essentially ghost money? A lot.
@m2c -- Your "logic" is...revealing.
Basically, you're saying that Trump shouldn't release his tax returns because people might criticize his behavior.
Since when are politicians supposed to be above criticism?
Oh, that's right, it's only TEH STOOPID EBIL LIBRUHLZ who need to be scrutinized...;-D...
(Just pretend I posted a couple TOS-violating links here...;-D...)
He'll just claim they are a fraud
The following piece appeared in Friday's NY Times, explaining why presidential candidates have come to be expected to realease their tax returns. Seems it all started with Dick "I am not a crook" Nixon.
Lost in the debate over Donald J. Trump’s refusal to release his tax returns is the story of where the custom of disclosure comes from — and why it can be so valuable as a measure of character. It’s a tale of presidential tax shenanigans, political scandal and one of the most famous quotations in American history: Richard M. Nixon’s “I am not a crook.”
The story begins in July 1969, when Congress eliminated a provision of the tax code that had allowed a sitting or former president to donate his papers to a public or nonprofit archive in exchange for a very large tax deduction. Congress’s rationale was that a president’s papers already belonged to the public.
In his taxes for 1969, President Nixon indicated that four months before Congress acted, he had donated more than 1,000 boxes of documents to the National Archives. He claimed a deduction of more than $500,000.
The write-off didn’t become public until 1973, when it was mentioned in passing during a lawsuit related to the Watergate break-in. Although the deed formally giving the papers to the National Archives was dated March 27, 1969, it turned out not to have been signed until April 1970, nine months after presidential document donations lost nearly all their tax benefits. (A thorough account of Nixon’s tax dodge is contained in a paperwritten for the United States Capitol Historical Society by the Northwestern University law professor Joseph J. Thorndike.)
Had Nixon really beaten the deadline? And had he overstated the papers’ value to generate a personal windfall?
Reporters swarmed and advocates for fair taxation demanded an audit. But Nixon refused to release his taxes and opposed an audit. The I.R.S. bowed to his wishes.
There the story stalled until Oct. 3, 1973, when Jack White, a 31-year-old suburban reporter for The Providence Journal-Bulletin, broke the biggest story of his career. While big-time reporters prowled Washington for details about President Nixon’s taxes, White covered small-town politics and high-society events as manager of his paper’s bureau in Newport, R.I. But White, rumpled and easygoing, had a knack for earning the trust of sources. One source provided him with evidence that Nixon had paid taxes of only $792.81 in 1970 and $878.03 in 1971, despite having income exceeding $400,000.
By donating his papers with a backdated deed, Nixon had slashed his tax bill drastically. He paid the equivalent of a family of three earning about $8,000 in 1970 dollars.
After White’s article was published, demands rose for full disclosure. The next month, White’s colleague at the Providence paper, Joseph Ungaro, asked Nixon about his taxes during his appearance at a newspaper editors’ conference in Florida. Nixon replied: “I welcome this kind of examination, because people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I am not a crook.”
In the meantime, the I.R.S. reversed itself and decided to audit Nixon’s returns for the previous few years. While the audit was underway, Nixon buckled to public pressure in December 1973 and released five years of tax documents. He also asked a congressional committee to review, among other things, his gift of the papers.
The aftermath was sweeter for White than for Nixon. In May 1974, White won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting. He died in 2005 without revealing his source. (As the story unfolded, I.R.S investigators said they had solved the mystery of the leak by tracing the president’s tax records to a photocopy machine in the agency’s national computer center in Martinsburg, W.Va. One unidentified I.R.S. employee quit to avoid being fired.)
Three months after White won his Pulitzer, Nixon resigned from office, not because of taxes but under threat of impeachment for the Watergate cover-up. Among other misdeeds, he was accused of misusing the F.B.I., the C.I.A. and the I.R.S. In addition to losing his presidency, Nixon lost nearly half his net worth paying what he owed to the I.R.S.
If I may quote (or paraphrase) one of the two Presidential candidates . . . "What difference does it make?"
If Mr. Trump's tax returns have been audited every year for the past ? ? ? , and the IRS has found nothing to take him to task on (and apparently they haven't or he would have been hauled away in matching bracelets ala Bernie Madoff long before now) then people must believe one or both of the following:
The tax system itself is corrupt and Mr. Trump has legally taken "advantage" of it in some way. If that's the case it becomes a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation for Mr. Trump. He either takes full advantage of the laws and becomes an "evil", "greedy" businessman or he needlessly and incompetently leaves money on the table and in doing so becomes an unworthy fiduciary of his own company (CEO have been fired for less). In that case your argument should be with your elected representatives for allowing such inequality to be introduced in the system, not with Mr. Trump for taking legal advantage of it.
The IRS is corrupt and has given Mr. Trump a pass for some reason, allowing him to claim deductions that he's not entitled to claim. (Perhaps the examiners working on his returns are going to receive employment with his organization for turning a blind eye?) In that case you should have issue with the current sitting President (and his predecessors) for allowing such corruption in that part of the Executive branch of the government. (And yes, if that's the case then not only should Mr. Trump be given a new suit of clothing in prison orange then so should the corrupt IRS employees that allowed it to happen.)
I suggest you learn the difference between tradition and the actual meaning of a gesture.
So one again, why does it matter? That you don't seem to have an answer for.
