Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said he would release his tax returns once former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton releases her deleted emails.
“We have a situation in this country that has to be taken care of,” Trump said. “I will release my tax returns, against my lawyers’ wishes, when she releases her 33,000 emails that have been deleted. As soon as she releases them, I will release, I will release my tax returns.”
Trump continued to say his tax returns are being audited by the Internal Revenue Service, which does not necessarily prevent them from being released by his campaign, according to the IRS.
His son, Donald Trump Jr., has added the explanation that releasing the returns would lead the public to ask “questions that would detract” from Trump’s campaign message.
The Clinton campaign has sought to use Trump’s lack of transparency about his taxes against him, floating different possibilities of damaging disclosures that might be revealed with his taxes.
Clinton pressed that case Monday night, raising a few explanations that would be unflattering or disqualifying for Trump.
“Maybe he’s not as rich as he says he is. Maybe he’s not as charitable as he claims to be,” she said, adding that maybe the returns show he owes money to Wall Street banks or foreign governments.
“Or maybe he doesn’t want the audience to know he doesn’t pay anything in taxes,” she concluded.
Trump did not challenge that last suggestion. “That makes me smart,” he quipped. He told the television audience that his personal financial disclosures filed with the Federal Elections Commission would be more informative than his tax returns would be.
Clinton herself has released tax returns from recent years. Her 2015 returns showed that she payed a 34.2 percent effective tax rate on income of over $10 million.
While Trump has said he won’t release his returns, he is isolated in that position. Republican leaders have said that he should make them public. Democratic members of Congress have introduced legislation that would force all presidential candidates to make their returns public.
Without his tax returns available, Trump’s finances are a matter of speculation for his opponent, the media and the public. There are some indications, however, that some of his claims regarding his earnings and charitable habits would be undercut by his returns.
Forbes magazine, which maintains lists of billionaires’ net worths, places Trump’s net worth at $4.5 billion, significantly lower than the $10 billion Trump has claimed. Although tax returns wouldn’t reveal his wealth, they would give a more complete picture of his income streams.
Tax returns also would detail Trump’s charitable contributions. While Trump has claimed that he gave millions to charities in the years before he ran for president, a Washington Post inquiry into the charities he is said to have supported has failed to find evidence of those donations.
The GOP candidate’s tax returns were a major storyline in the 2012 elections as well. Then, Mitt Romney did not release his 2011 returns until September. Before he did, then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, said on the Senate floor that he had been told that Romney paid no taxes. When Romney released his returns for 2011 later in September, they showed that he did in fact pay $1.9 million in taxes, for an effective tax rate of 14.1 percent.
