Donald Trump is starting out the 2016 general election campaign with a tax problem of his own making. On Tuesday, he told The Associated Press that he didn't plan to release any of his tax returns before the November elections, saying the public wasn't interested and "there's nothing to learn from them." On Wednesday, Trump explained that he is following the advice of his lawyers, and said, "I will release them as soon as the audit is done. I hope that’s soon," preferably "before the election." Trump is under no legal obligation to release his tax returns, but opting not to do so is unusual.
And here's what people mean when they call it unusual: The last major presidential candidate not to release his tax returns was Gerald Ford in 1976, according to Joseph J. Thorndike, a presidential tax return expert at the nonpartisan Tax Analysts. Ford's decision to release only a summary of his returns wasn't as controversial, because the tradition of releasing full tax returns was started by his predecessor, Richard Nixon, Thorndike tells The New York Times, and Nixon was under audit at the time.
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