US tax authority 2 years late to audit Trump during presidency: Report

By Ovunc Kutlu

ISTANBUL (AA) - The US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) failed to audit former President Donald Trump's taxes in a timely manner during his time in the White House, according to a report Wednesday.

The tax authority started to audit Trump's tax filings for 2016 in 2019, more than two years into his term, which came only after Democrats took control of the House of Representatives and asked for the tax information.

While only Trump's 2016 tax return was subject to a mandatory examination by the IRS, the former president's individual income tax returns filed in 2018, 2019 and 2020 were not selected for examination until after he left office, according to the report.

The tax agency, however, has a policy of conducting mandatory tax audits on sitting presidents that dates as far back as 1977.

The report by House's Ways and Means Committee, which voted late Tuesday to publicly release Trump's tax returns from 2015 - 2020, said it expected mandatory audits were being conducted promptly but it found that the IRS' program under the Trump administration was "dormant."

"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," said Committee Chairman Rep. Richard Neal, a Democrat from the state of Massachusetts.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said there is an "urgent need for legislation to ensure the public can trust in real accountability and transparency during the audit of a sitting president’s tax returns – not only in the case of President Trump, but for any president.”

A separate report also unveiled that Trump declared negative income and $0 in taxable income on his federal tax returns in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2020.

For 2018 and 2019, Trump and his wife paid $999,466 and $133,445 in taxes, respectively, in federal income taxes.

The Joint Committee on Taxation, in addition, found in its report that Trump claimed a refund of nearly $5.5 million on his 2020 tax return.

Audits of Trump's eight business entities will be made public in the coming days.