Trump says he won’t release tax returns because of audits

How does Trump’s explanation for refusing to release his returns hold up? Ted Cruz (R-TX) went after his opponent Donald Trump for not releasing his tax returns while being audited.

“Mitt Romney, who totally blew an election that should have been won and whose tax returns made him look like a fool, is now playing tough guy”, Trump tweeted Wednesday.

“When people decide they don’t want to give you their taxes, it’s usually because there’s something they don’t want you to see”, he said. Both. Bankman is technically correct (as we’d expect from a law professor) that there’s no law preventing Trump from releasing his tax returns simply because he’s under audit. But there’s some irony here that Mitt Romney is doing to Donald Trump, by just sort of openly speculating and trolling him on this, what Harry Reid did to Mitt Romney four years ago, when Harry Reid just said, “You know what?”

“Usually when there’s an audit, and it’s cleared up, if there are no other issues, it’s a number of years, two or three at least, before you hear from us again, unless something in your next return pops up”, Mr. Koskinen said Friday at a taping of C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers” in Washington, which will air on Sunday.

Goldburd also wasn’t surprised that Trump might be audited regularly. The media often pulled the dad card, noting that George Romney had released 12 years of tax returns when he sought the 1968 GOP nomination. Trump unsuccessfully sued Timothy O’Brien, the author of a 2005 book “TrumpNation: The Art of Being The Donald”, for writing that his worth was between $150 million and $250 million.

Romney, who decided against a third presidential run previous year after initially considering jumping in to the race, uncorked his attack on Trump, ahead of next week’s Super Tuesday contests that could further cement the billionaire’s strong front-runner status in the GOP presidential race.

Former IRS agent Alan Olsen said to be audited every year for the past 12 years is a “very unusual” level of scrutiny, Bloomberg reports. “I tell my people: ‘Why is it that every single year, I’m audited, whereas other people that are very rich … are never audited – and they don’t even know what I’m talking about when I talk about audits”.

Trump suggested that releasing his returns now would compromise his negotiating position with the IRS.

A spokesman for Rubio, Alex Conant, told Independent Journal Review that the campaign will release Rubio’s tax returns “in the next few days”. “Until the investigation is concluded”, Goldburd said, “he should not be releasing anything”.

Independent Journal Review reached out to the Cruz campaign about whether it will releasing their candidate’s tax returns.

Trump stressed as he has in the past that he pays “as little as possible because it’s an expense and it’s not one I’m happy paying because frankly the United States government wastes a lot of money”.

But he said Trump’s statement that he “can’t” publicly release his returns is a headscratcher.