Topic summary
Tax returns of Donald Trump
- First 100 days
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Donald Trump, President of the United States, controversially refused to release his tax returns after being elected president the first time in 2016, although he promised to do so during his campaign. In 2021, the Manhattan district attorney (DA) obtained several years of Trump's tax information, and in late 2022, the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee obtained and released six years of his returns.
Trump repeatedly and falsely claimed that he could not release the returns while they were under audit by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). After Democrats won a majority in the House of Representatives in 2018, Trump sued to prevent his returns from being released by the IRS or his accountants, which were being sought by certain state officials and congressional committees. The Manhattan DA's request for records as part of its criminal probe of the Trump Organization (regarding a hush-money payment made during the 2016 presidential campaign and alleged tax fraud) was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, resulting in a 2020 decision rejecting Trump's claims that the president holds absolute immunity from criminal process. In February 2021, Trump's accounting firm Mazars provided the DA eight years of Trump's tax returns.
In May 2019, Ways and Means Committee chair Richard Neal requested six years of Trump's tax records; after appeals were exhausted, he received the documents on November 30, 2022. Four weeks later, the committee voted 24–16 along party lines to release the returns to the public, which was done on December 30. The committee found that the IRS failed to audit Trump's taxes during the first two years of his presidency, and that the only audit conducted during his tenure was never completed.
In 2019, the U.S. House Oversight Committee subpoenaed Mazars for tax and other records related to an investigation into Trump's conduct; an appeal to the Supreme Court resulted in a decision outlining circumstances Congress can request presidential records without violating separation of powers. Also in 2019, California temporarily enacted legislation to require presidential candidates to release tax returns to be allowed on the primary election ballot, and New York State passed a law allowing the release of state tax returns to congressional committees for valid purposes.
In 2026, as a settlement of Trump v. Internal Revenue Service, the Justice Department under the second Trump administration entered into a legal agreement with the Trump family prohibiting the IRS from auditing their tax returns filed prior to May 2026.