Donald Trump's rationale for not releasing his tax returns, like every other major-party presidential candidate has since the early 1970s, is confusing. He says he can't release them because he's being audited, but the IRS has no rule against releasing returns under audit. Plus, Trump's returns from 2002 to 2008 are no longer being audited, and he just offered to release his tax returns "immediately" if Hillary Clinton releases the 33,000 deleted emails her team deemed personal, not State Department business. Trump has been reneging on pledges to release his tax returns since April 2011, when he said he'd show them when President Obama showed his birth certificate. (Obama released his long-form certificate two weeks later.)
In other words, Trump just really doesn't want to release his tax returns. "So what, exactly, aren't voters seeing?" asked CNN's Phil Mattingly on Wednesday. CNN got some ideas from NYU tax law professor Joshua Blank — what kind of taxable income he has, for example — but Mattingly also listed four reasons Trump might be wary of showing his financial cards, based on a CNN analysis of available Trump financial disclosures: His returns would show how much (or how little) he has given to charity, his tax rate — which could be (and has been) 0 percent — clues to his total net worth (or at least his net income and adjusted gross income), and "perhaps most importantly for Trump's opponents, a detailed release of Trump's returns would provide a widow into Trump's business connections." You can learn more in the report below. Peter Weber
The Week
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