1 of 3 | Documents shared by the House Ways and Means Committee Tuesday said Donald Trump paid no income tax in 2020 after he lost $4.8 million at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown. File Photo by Archie Carpenter/UPI |
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Dec. 21 (UPI) -- President Donald Trump paid no income tax in 2020 after he lost $4.8 million at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown, according to a summary of his returns shared by the House Ways and Means committee.
The committee released the summary prepared by the joint committee on taxation ahead of the planned release of Trump's raw tax returns that are set to be shared with the public in the coming days after being scrubbed of sensitive personal information including his Social Security number and addresses.
The report said that Trump's companies often paid little or nothing in federal income taxes from 2015 to 2020 despite reporting millions in earnings. Trump routinely slashed his tax bill by claiming steep business losses that offset that income.
In 2015, Trump reported making more than $50 million, offset by more than $85 million in reported losses and garnered a $641,931 tax bill due to the alternative minimum tax, a levy that makes it more difficult for the wealthy to pay nothing in taxes. The two following years Trump paid $750 in taxes, according to the report.
Trump made $24.3 million in adjusted gross income and paid nearly $1 million in federal tax in 2018. The following year, he reported $4.4 million in income and paid $133,445 in taxes, before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Following the onset of the pandemic in 2020, Trump reported a loss of $4.8 million and paid $0 in income taxes.
The details on Trump's taxes come less than a month before Republicans take over the body in the House after the committee had waged a legal war to gain access to Trump's tax returns that culminated with a vote to release them on Tuesday. Democrats said the release kept with past presidential norms while Republicans said it invaded the privacy of a private citizen because of politics.
Following Tuesday's vote, the House committee revealed that the Internal Revenue Service failed to audit Trump's tax filings during his first two years in office, despite a policy that requires sitting presidents be audited.
House Ways and Means Committee Chair Richard Neal, D-Mass., said he had not come across evidence that Trump had tried to influence the agency when it came to examining his taxes, which would be a felony.
