Thanks to all the other exciting things he’s done as President, the issue of Donald Trump’s taxes has fallen by the wayside, despite the fact that his returns could help clear up any investigation into Trump’s ties with Russia as well as just how much he’ll benefit from his own tax plan. Trump’s said he’s “brilliantly” manipulated tax law in the past, but of course, he won’t release his tax returns. However, Trump will release a financial disclosure form to the Office of Government Ethics to reveal how much he made in 2016.
Weirdly, Trump will follow Vice President Mike Pence, who released his disclosure form Monday showing an income completely derived from being governor of Indiana and “between $105,000 and $295,000 in student loan debt” belonging to his children. Donald Trump has his hands in several more ventures than The Hoosier State, so his finances are probably more complex. However, since the 2016 year includes campaign, candidate, and president-elect time, the document would show how all three of those stages affected the Trump Organization. Trump’s previous disclosure, filed in May 2016, showed that Trump’s business boomed after he started his presidential run.
Trump is following in the steps of his two immediate predecessors as a new president is not required to submit such a form until their second year in office. Financial disclosures by members of the administration have been their own type of exciting: Michael Flynn failed to mention payments received from Russian sources, which lead to Flynn losing his job, and Jared Kushner didn’t disclose he was part of a tech startup with George Soros, Peter Thiel, and Goldman Sachs, which may have helped lead to Kushner’s rise in the Trump administration.
(via Associated Press & Washington Post)