Tag: House Ways and Means Committee

Erik Paulsen voted to keep Trump’s tax returns a secret

Republican U.S. Rep. Erik Paulsen is paddling toward reclaiming his seat as quickly as he can, in part by promising to “stand up to” his party “and President [Donald] Trump” if push comes to shove.

Well, last month, he had his chance. He did not take it.

At issue were Trump’s tax returns, which have remained secret and are now back in the limelight. After 18 months of trawling through the Trump family’s financial dirty laundry, The New York Times published a scathing report accusing the sitting president of “dubious tax schemes” and “outright fraud,” helping his parents sidestep taxes, and undervaluing that money so he could siphon as much as possible to himself and his siblings.

A Trump lawyer has called these allegations “100 percent false.” Trump himself described the story as “a very old, boring and often told hit piece.”

View the complete October 5 article by Hannah Jones on the CityPages website here.

These representatives voted to keep Trump’s sketchy tax practices hidden from the public

NOTE:  Rep. Erik Paulsen sits on the House Ways and Means Committee and is one of the representatives who voted to keep Trump’s taxes private — more than once.

21 House Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee blocked disclosure of Donald Trump’s tax returns last month.

The New York Times published a lengthy investigative report on Tuesday accusing President Donald Trump of participating in “dubious tax schemes during the 1990s, including instances of outright fraud.” Despite his many 2016 campaign promises to eventually release his tax returns, he refuses to do so, and the public is still in the dark about his personal finances. Now, thanks to a vote last month by the 21 Republican members of the House Ways and Means Committee, those tax returns are unlikely to come to light in the foreseeable future. Those Republicans voted to keep the president’s tax returns hidden.

Relying on a “vast trove of confidential tax returns and financial records,” the Times determined that Trump “helped his parents dodge taxes,” established with his siblings a “sham corporation to disguise millions of dollars in gifts from their parents,” assisted their father in taking “improper tax deductions worth millions more,” and formulated a “strategy to undervalue his parents’ real estate holdings by hundreds of millions of dollars on tax returns, sharply reducing the tax bill when those properties were transferred to him and his siblings.”

A Trump lawyer claimed these “allegations of fraud and tax evasion are 100 percent false, and highly defamatory,” but the president didn’t deny them. In a tweet, he repeated his standard and false claim that the paper is “failing” and described their story as “a very old, boring and often told hit piece.”

View the complete October 3 article by Josh Israel on the ThinkProgress website here.

House Panel Approves GOP Tax Measure

NOTE:  Rep. Erik Paulsen serves on the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee.

The following article by Ryan McCrimmon was posted on the Roll Call website November 9, 2017:

Chamber’s version differs markedly from Senate proposal

From left, House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady, ranking member Richard E. Neal and California Rep. Mike Thompson attend a committee markup of House Republican tax bill on Thursday. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)

The House Ways and Means Committee on Thursday approved the Republican tax plan after making key changes such as raising repatriation tax rates on corporate cash held abroad, restoring the adoption child credit and changing the bill’s treatment of “pass-through” businesses.

Committee members voted along party lines, 24-16, to approve the legislation setting up a likely House floor vote next week. The substantive changes Thursday came in a so-called manager’s amendment from Chairman Kevin Brady who unveiled the package less than an hour before the panel took it up, prompting an outcry from Democrats.

After the four-day Ways and Means markup, the legislation will next head to the House Rules Committee — likely early next week — where any final changes could still be made by Republican leaders before the bill goes to the House floor later in the week. Continue reading “House Panel Approves GOP Tax Measure”