TRUMP Tax Returns Will be Made Public,
 

Meet The Irish American Who Can Demand Donald Trump’s Tax Returns

Friend of the Irish, Congressman Richard Neal has power to request President Donald Trump's tax returns.

IrishCentral 7 Nov, 2018


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Congressman Richard Neal now has power to request President Donald Trump's tax returns.US House Office of Photography


Co-Chair of the Friends of Ireland group in Congress, Richard Neal, can now force President Trump to hand over his tax returns.


Congressman Richard Neal, perhaps the most engaged member of Congress on Irish issues, will become one of the best-known political faces in America after the Democrats won back the House in the Midterm Elections. He is a long time Co-Chair of the Friends of Ireland group in Congress.

He is the man who can ask President Trump for his tax returns and issue a subpoena if he doesn’t get them.


Neal (69), from Springfield, Massachusetts will be the head of the House Ways and Means Committee, the second most important position after House Speaker.

The Ways and Means committee is about as big as it can get on Capitol Hill. The committee deals with taxes, health care, Medicare, Social Security, welfare, and international trade.

Such is the critical importance of the committee’s brief that members cannot serve on any other House panel unless they secure a special waiver.


REMINDER: Under the tax code, the House Ways and Means chairman can demand and receive any taxpayer’s records from the IRS for confidential review. Wouldn’t need approval from the full House, the Senate or the administration...


Dem Rep. Richard Neal is in line to lead Ways & Means. Asked by WSJ's @RichardRubinDC if he would go for the tax returns, Neal responded: "Yes."

If he gets them, Neal will have to decide how/if to make them public, which would require a committee vote.


Neal comes from a tough background. He and his two younger sisters were raised in Springfield by their mother, a housewife, and their father, a custodian at MassMutual, Insurance and Financial Services. Neal's maternal grandparents were from Northern Ireland and his paternal grandparents were also from Ireland. Neal's mother died of a heart attack when he was 13, and he was attending Springfield Technical High School when his father died.

Neal and his sisters moved in with their grandmother, and later their aunt, and were forced to rely on Social Security checks as they grew up.

The affable Neal does not seek a high profile but is considered one of the most approachable and accessible Congressmen in the House.

Neal's rise to a key position has had its twists and turns along the way.

As Ray O’Hanlon at the Irish Echo noted:

“Little airtime and ink has been devoted to Neal’s rise in what is generally considered to be the most crucial committee in the U.S. House of Representatives, Ways and Means.”


He has held a seat since his first election for the Massachusetts 2nd District in 1989.

Low key and no media hound, circumstances have just intervened on behalf of Congressman Neal which puts him in the media glare.

A few years back Congressman Sander Levin was the ranking Democratic Member of Ways and Means.

The committee chairman was Republican Congressman Kevin Brady from Texas.

Rep. Levin stood down and next in line for the Democrats was Xavier Becerra from California. But Becerra returned to California to take up the job of the attorney general in the Golden State and Neal moved up to ranking member and will now be Chairman.
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Re: TRUMP Tax Returns Will be Made Public,
 

TRUMP Tax Returns Will be Made Public, US House Panel Votes

A committee in the US House of Representatives has voted to make public six years of Donald Trump's tax returns.

BBC News 21 DEC 2022.




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The move caps a nearly four-year legal battle by Democrats to obtain the documents, which was ultimately decided by the US Supreme Court last month.

US presidents are not required by law to release their tax returns, but for decades they have done so voluntarily.

The former president has fought hard to shield his tax returns.



The US House Ways and Means Committee voted 24-16 on Tuesday evening to publish the documents, with all Democrats on the panel in favour and all Republicans opposed.

One of the committee members, Pennsylvania Democrat Brendan Boyle, said afterwards: "This is one of the most important votes I will ever cast as a member of Congress, and I stand by it 100%."

But Kevin Brady, the ranking Republican on the committee, said Democrats had just "unleashed a dangerous new political weapon".

"Congress' enemies list is back," said the Texas congressman. "Every American taxpayer who may get on the wrong side of majority in Congress is now at risk."

It is unclear when the public will see the financial documents which stem from 2015-20, when Mr Trump was running for president and serving in the White House.

Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat on the panel, told CNN the release of the files could take "a few days" in order to redact personal information such as Social Security numbers.

The returns could offer a first-hand look into Mr Trump's finances, including his assets, sources of income, charitable contributions and liabilities, including the possibility of loans owed to foreign entities.

In 2016, Mr Trump became the first major-party presidential nominee since Richard Nixon in 1972 to decline to publicly release his tax returns while campaigning for office. At the time, he said he would do so after an Internal Revenue Service audit had concluded.

However, on Tuesday Democrats on the panel said that Mr Trump was not actually under an audit in 2016, and that the Internal Revenue Service did not begin their official audit until 2019.

The House Ways and Means Committee had first sought the returns when Democrats took over the lower chamber of Congress in 2019. The committee, citing a federal law allowing it to request special access to individual tax returns, said the information was necessary as a part of a review of federal tax law.

Republican critics, however, have countered that such explanations were merely an excuse to access Mr Trump's financial documents.

The Trump administration refused to co-operate with the committee's request, prompting a drawn-out legal battle that ended when the US Supreme Court, in an unsigned opinion, upheld an appellate court ruling that the Democrats were entitled to the returns.

In 2020, the New York Times obtained leaked copies of 18 years of Mr Trump's tax returns. In a series of articles on the topic, the newspaper reported that the president paid no federal taxes in 10 of those 18 years and only $750 (£615) in each of his first two years in the White House. It also disclosed that the then-president was in a fight with the Internal Revenue Service over the legitimacy of a $72.9m tax refund he had claimed and owed more than $400m in debt due by 2024.

A representative of Mr Trump's business empire denied the accuracy of the report at the time. Official copies of the former president's tax returns, which are now expected to be released before Republicans take control of Congress on 3 January, should settle the matter.

The vote comes one day after a Democratic-led congressional panel asked the US justice department prosecute the former president for insurrection and other criminal charges related to last year's riot by his supporters at the Capitol in Washington DC.