The I.R.S. subjected both President Donald J. Trump’s predecessor and his successor to annual audits of their tax returns once they took office, spokespeople for Barack Obama and President Biden said on Wednesday, intensifying questions about how Mr. Trump escaped such scrutiny until Democrats in the House started inquiring.
Late Tuesday, a House committee revealed that the I.R.S. failed to audit Mr. Trump during his first two years in office despite a rule that states that “the individual tax returns for the president and the vice president are subject to mandatory review.” But its report left unclear whether that lapse reflected general dysfunction or whether Mr. Trump received special treatment.
The disclosure of routine audits of Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden during their time in office suggested that the agency’s treatment of Mr. Trump was an aberration.
How odd. I’m sure it had nothing to do with the fact that Trump installed cronies at the top of the agency. Like this one, which I had forgotten about:
President Trump earlier this year asked Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, to prioritize a confirmation vote for his nominee to be the chief counsel of the Internal Revenue Service, indicating that it was a higher priority than voting on the nomination of William P. Barr as attorney general, a person familiar with the conversation said.
White House aides insisted for months that the confirmation of the nominee, Michael J. Desmond, a tax lawyer from Santa Barbara, Calif., was a top priority after passage of the tax bill in 2017.
But the request by Mr. Trump, made to Mr. McConnell on Feb. 5, raised questions about whether the president had other motivations. For months, the president has seethed over vows by congressional Democrats that they would move to obtain his tax returns from the I.R.S. And this week, the House Ways and Means Committee chairman, Representative Richard E. Neal, Democrat of Massachusetts, formally asked the I.R.S. for six years of the returns, using an obscure provision in the tax code to do so.
On Thursday, asked if he would direct the I.R.S. not to disclose his tax returns, Mr. Trump said Democrats would have to talk to his lawyers.
“They’ll speak to my lawyers,” Mr. Trump said during remarks at the Oval Office. “They’ll speak to the attorney general.”
In July, when Mr. Desmond was first being considered by the Senate Finance Committee, Bloomberg reported that he had briefly advised the Trump Organization on tax issues before Mr. Trump took office. James Wilkinson, a spokesman for Mr. Desmond, told Bloomberg that Mr. Desmond had helped with “a discrete reporting matter for a subsidiary company that was resolved with no tax impact.”
In private practice, Mr. Desmond worked for a time alongside William Nelson and Sheri Dillon, who currently serve as tax counsels to the Trump Organization.
And, as we already know, he put a Beverly Hills tax accountant in charge of the agency after he wrote an op-ed urging Trump not to release his tax returns.
All these talking heads calling for the smelling salts over the release of Trump’s tax returns should STFU. This corrupt piece of work gamed the system at every turn and these documents should be in the public record. I don’t kid myself that any of his stalwart cultists will care. They agree that it’s smart for him to cheat on his taxes. After all, they keep sending the alleged billionaire their own hard earned cash so I don’t think they are too swift when it comes to money. But maybe this will penetrate for a few people who really don’t think super rich folks should game the system to the extent they end up paying no taxes at all. None of the rest of us get to do that.
Happy Hollandaise everybody!