Treasury likely to defy Tuesday deadline to turn over Trump tax returns
www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/treasury-likely-to-defy-tuesday-deadline-to-turn-over-trump-tax-returns/2019/04/23/daa7da46-653e-11e9-82ba-fcfeff232e8f_story.html?utm_term=.a0ecd397b4cf
The Treasury Department on Tuesday is likely to defy a second demand from House Democrats to turn over six years of President Trump’s tax returns, according to two administration officials, part of a widening White House effort to stymie congressional oversight.
House Democrats must now decide how forcefully to respond. They could seek to send a final written warning, subpoena the records under a 1924 law that appears to give them access to virtually any tax return, or summon top administration officials to testify.
One House Democrat asked his colleagues Monday to consider whether they should impeach Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Charles Rettig for failing to comply with their legal demands.
The White House has not offered any legal rationale for so far refusing to turn over the records. Instead, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin — Trump’s former campaign finance chairman — has attacked the motives of Democrats and said he is consulting with the Justice Department over how to proceed.
“There is nothing nefarious there at all,” White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said Tuesday on Fox News. “This was litigated in 2016, and they are going to keep pushing.”
He said Trump was not inclined to allow the release of his tax returns until an audit of the records is complete. Trump has not provided any details of the audit, however, and Trump’s former lawyer — Michael Cohen — has said he doesn’t believe the records are actually under audit.
Last week, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard E. Neal (D-Mass.) sent Rettig a pointed request for six years of Trump’s personal and business tax returns, giving him a 5 p.m. deadline on Tuesday. The IRS is a division of the Treasury Department, and Mnuchin has said he has taken charge of the administration’s response.
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The wording of the statute does not appear to offer discretion to the commissioner of the IRS, which is part of the Treasury Department, to refuse Neal’s request. However, the situation amounts to “uncharted territory” since there has not previously been an occasion where a request for tax returns under the little-used statute has been refused, according to George Yin, a University of Virginia law professor who has testified on the topic before the Ways and Means Committee.
The statute itself does not specify a timeline for compliance, or a penalty for an IRS commissioner or treasury secretary who fails to comply.
“Presumably if there was a refusal, and if the Congress doesn’t simply back off the request, there would be some type of conflict that would be resolved in court in some way, and then it would be up to the court to make a determination of at what point the treasury secretary has violated the law,” Yin said.