Plumbing The Secrets of Trump's Hugely Complicated Tax Returns

MUCH ADO is once again being made about Donald Trump's tax returns, because it has been a tradition since the nineteen seventies that all presidential candidates release them to the public, and the Democrats, now in control of one half of Congress, are determined to uphold tradition. The tradition began when the full extent of Richard Nixon's white collar treachery was revealed to the public, and ensuing seekers of the Executive Office decided to become a bit more forthcoming, as a precaution against the then gathering public mistrust of politicians and their promises, which remains with us today. Wherever the Republicans hold sway, there is no such interest in transparent tradition. Trump's fellow grand old partiers are evidently quite content to take the president's famously reliable word for it, that there is nothing of interest to be seen in his taxes, that they are currently under audit and therefore unavailable, and that they are so terribly complicated due to his enormous wealth and far flung investments and extensive charitable donations that nobody in the world except himself and a few select windmill cancer research scientists have the necessary intellectual skills to comprehend them, even if they were laid open for scrutiny for all the world. The unwashed masses, it would seem, lack the ability to even remotely comprehend the taxes of Donald Trump. Consider yourself a member of this benighted super majority. Precisely how the president's taxes can at once be so enormously complicated yet hold nothing unusual nor of interest has not been explained. What is certain, however, is that there is nothing about being under audit, in the law or anywhere else, which prevents someone's, anyone's personal taxes from being disclosed to whomever the taxee so designates. In 2014, a similarly taxalogically reticent Trump insisted that in the highly unlikely event that he were ever to run for president, his tax returns would be immediately forthcoming. Then, when he decided to actually make a go of it, he promised that shortly after his election, he would come forth with the concealed document. Then, when he indeed was elected, he postponed the grand disclosure until after the inauguration. Do we detect a pattern here? Well, of course, all the promised disclosure due dates came and went, with no tax returns. now we have arrived where we now stand; the Democrat majority in the House of Representatives is demanding to see the damned thing, and will soon vote to do exactly that, and the president has hired a formidable team of tax attorneys to resist the assault, much like the folks at the Alamo sent out urgent requests for assistance shortly before the Mexican army launched its final assault. The difference is that that tax lawyers willing to take Donald Trump's money are far more available than either willing, ready, and able Alamo defenders, and far more reliable than nineteenth century Mexican military conscripts. In 1924, in the wake of the infamous "Teapot" Dome' scandal, in which members of President Warren G. Harding's cabinet were taking bribes for favors in connection with oil drilling rights out west, Congress passed a law which clearly stipulated than Congress may, at any time, issue a subpoena requiring any American citizen's tax returns to be divulged for Congressional scrutiny. The law includes a provision requiring Congress to have a clear and present and specific reason for the subpoena, which is the part that Trump's lawyers, demonstrably highly competently bull doggish, are going to use in their defense against disclosure. We may never know why this president is so determined that his income tax returns shall never see the light of day, because the litigation over their erstwhile disclosure may continue until not only Trump and the rest of us are long dead, it may continue until all life on Earth is made extinct as a consequence of climate change, the greatest threat to American national security according to the Department of Defense, and which Donald Trump has never even made any false pretensions to fight. Maybe Trump is far less wealthy than he has always bragged about being, or maybe his returns would shed light on a few nefarious financial dealings upon which Trump would much rather shed none. And since Donald Trump never does what he says he is going to do, we can be well assured than when he doesn't even claim that he will do something, like delay the destruction of the environment, it will never, ever get done.