Photo from Susan Melkisethian, Flickr
By Michael Gold
An American citizen recently made a deal with the IRS. and the Justice Department that his past tax returns, and those of his sons, can never be audited.
Where can I sign up for that myself?
Oh, wait. I can’t.
Only one person in the United States, in fact, in the entire history of our great republic, is able enjoy this exemption.
President Donald Trump.
Of all the terrible things he’s done, this is one of the worst. It’s like a silent January 6th – this is a quiet coup that undermines the foundation of our country.
The Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution contains a clause that states that every citizen shall be provided “the equal protection of the laws.”
I’m obviously nothing even close to a Constitutional scholar, but it seems that Trump has just made for himself, and his family, a rule that stipulates he is in fact above us in terms of how the law is applied to every citizen.
Joe Taxpayer has to responsibly file a tax return every April 15th and pay Uncle Sam what he’s due. But every past tax return Trump, his sons and their companies have filed are now permanently blocked from examination by the IRS.
What if Trump and his family have theoretically filed returns that don’t necessarily provide Uncle Sam what he’s owed? Tough luck, USA.
Under the deal the Justice Department made with President Trump, the government would never know if he, the members of his family, or his companies, have sent to the Treasury a check for what they really owed for past year’s filings. There would be no way for the IRS to check these tax returns.
The effect of this deal is that Trump and his sons may have already effectively avoided paying their legally required share of taxes and never be called to account for it. In the meantime, the rest of us citizens, who are compelled to pay our required share, are left in the dust, wondering if we’ve paid more than Trump and his family.
And we may well have cause to believe that Trump has done whatever he could to engage in such avoidance. Even as far back as 2016, when he ran for President the first time, Trump would not release his tax returns to the public, breaking a norm for presidential candidates. This might make the public wonder what the returns actually contained that Trump didn’t want made widely known.
In 2020, The New York Times obtainedTrump’s tax returns from an IRS contractor. The Times published an article in September 2020 which stated that Trump paid $750.00 in taxes in 2016, then $750.00 in taxes again in 2017, when he was president (source: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/09/27/us/donald-trump-taxes.html).
I don’t know about you, but I would think hundreds of millions of Americans pay a tax bill a lot higher than $750.00. Isn’t Trump supposed to be a billionaire?
“His reports to the I.R.S. portray a businessman who takes in hundreds of millions of dollars a year yet racks up chronic losses that he aggressively employs to avoid paying taxes, “ the Times article stated.
For example, it appears he paid Ivanka, his daughter, about $747,000 one year and then wrote off the expense as consulting fees, according to Business Insider (source: https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-paid-ivanka-700000-plus-for-consulting-times-investigation-says-2020-9).
Four years ago in New York City, the Trump Organization was convicted on 17 counts of tax fraud, falsifying business records and conspiracy,” according to a website article by CNBC , the business news cable network (source: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/06/trump-organization-convicted-in-new-york-criminal-tax-fraud-case.html).
“The case related to a scheme by his company since 2005 to avoid taxes on compensation to then-chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg and other executives,” the CNBC article stated.
The New York Times provided more background on what the case involved.
“The conviction on all 17 counts, after more than a day of jury deliberations in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, stemmed from the company’s practice of doling out off-the-books perks to executives: They received luxury apartments, leased Mercedes-Benzes, extra cash at Christmas, even free cable television. They paid taxes on none of it,” stated the Times article (source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/06/nyregion/trump-org-verdict-guilty.html).
In May 2024, Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, for the purpose of covering up hush money payments he made to a porn star and a Playboy model, with whom he was allegedly having affairs.
Since 1977, the IRS has required an audit for every income tax return filed by a sitting U.S. president or vice president, according to Tax Notes, a nonpartisan tax research news organization (source: https://www.taxnotes.com/tax-history-project/tax-history-why-presidents-are-audited-every-year/2019/02/22/2957m).
Tax Notes published an article in 2022 which stated that in 2017 and 2018, the IRS somehow didn’t audit President Trump’s tax returns (source: https://www.taxnotes.com/opinions/why-and-when-did-irs-stop-auditing-president/2022/12/27/7fhl8).
Why did that happen? Why did they ignore their own rules to conduct a mandatory audit of every president?
Tax Notes stated that the presidential audit program “was created to ensure that presidents are following the law — that the tax collector in chief is also a tax payer in chief. Providing that assurance is crucial to shared notions of fiscal citizenship — and to the viability of the tax system itself.”
The Tax Notes article is precise about why it’s a huge issue if the president is not paying his fair share of taxes.
“Shared ideals of fiscal citizenship are what make a self-assessed income tax workable. If people begin to question the fairness of the system — if they begin to suspect that some people are above the law — the fiscal edifice begins to crumble,” the Tax Notes article states.
“Americans have relied on the IRS to enforce the tax laws, even when those laws are applied to the president. The audit program has been a backstop for fiscal citizenship, ensuring that the nation’s chief tax collector is obeying the same tax laws as everyone else,” Tax Notes says.
“For decades, in other words, the audit program has been a source of reassurance. It’s a guarantee that tax avoidance by the president won’t make regular people feel like chumps when they pony up the cash on April 15,” the Tax Notes article points out.
This is what bothers me terribly and should upset every U.S. citizen. Why does Trump get a break when we have to pay up what the government says?
The Constitution states that every citizen is treated the same. Because he’s the President, we need to make sure that he’s paying his taxes like the rest of us, according to what the law demands we owe.
Trump has turned this policy on its head. Trump is saying, in effect, because I’m President I must be exempt from being audited. Unlike the rest of us, who can be audited anytime, to make sure we pay what the government says we need to pay to fund its operations.
In a way this is like January 6th – he does things that no one else is allowed to do – and he can get away with it because he’s the President of the United States. The rest of are left to carry the tax load that he refuses to bear.
The President is supposed to be the moral leader of the American people, among other things. He or she is supposed to lead the country by example, Trump’s agreement that the IRS no longer conduct audits on his past tax returns is as grave a break of trust as anything we’ve ever seen from him. If he can do this, citizens may well ask, why can’t I? Why is he allowed this extraordinary break that no one else can get?
This is one ugly way you fray the bonds that hold us together as a country.
Our current national debt is $39 trillion. Who’s going to pay that off? It looks like Trump is going to do everything he can not to help the rest of us reduce the weight of this burden.
English philosopher John Locke wrote that citizens of every nation have a social contract with their political leadership. When a leader abuses his power for personal gain, he gives up the right to retain his office. The people then have the right to remove that leader from office.
Congress, are you listening?
For more information on Trump’s deal with the IRS, go to: https://taxlawcenter.org/blog/our-resources-on-the-trump-irs-lawsuit-and-settlement-agreement.
Michael Gold is a Westchester based reporter whose work has been published in The New York Daily News, The Albany Times-Union, The Hartford Courant and other newspapers. He’s a volunteer trustee with the Putnam County Land Trust.
