President Trump Cannot Hide His Tax Returns From Congress

Introduction and summary

Donald Trump has reneged on a promise he made nearly four years ago to release his tax returns publicly. By keeping his returns hidden, he has broken the precedent every president and major party nominee for president has followed over the past 40 years. His actions also heighten concerns about what he could be hiding.

The new Democratic majority in the U.S. House of Representatives has pledged to conduct the kind of vigorous oversight of the executive branch that has been lacking for the past two years. As part of that oversight agenda, House leaders have said that they intend to invoke their authority under the law to obtain Trump’s tax returns from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and to review them. Trump’s Treasury Department is threatening to withhold the returns from Congress and take the issue to the courts, where his team reportedly hopes to bog down the request in a “quagmire of arcane legal arguments.”1 But the law could not be clearer: Congress’ tax committees have the authority to obtain Trump’s tax returns on request—and the U.S. Treasury Department has no basis for refusing. Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin would be violating the law if he directs the IRS to stonewall Congress.

This report explains why Congress has not only the clear authority to obtain Trump’s tax returns, but also the constitutional responsibility to do so given his secrecy and his domestic and foreign business entanglements, as well as the powers of the office. It explains that the law giving Congress this authority was intended for situations such as this—to enable Congress to exercise oversight over the executive branch and monitor conflicts of interest. While regular citizens can expect that their tax returns will remain private, the president of the United States should have no such expectation, especially when he refuses to divest his domestic and international business holdings. Tax returns contain information not available elsewhere that could provide critical information to complete the president’s financial picture.

View the complete April 1 article by Seth Hanlon on the Center for American Progress website here.