Other Papers Say: Why didn’t IRS audit Trump?

The following editorial originally appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

A gaping question remains to be answered following the House Ways and Means Committee’s decision to release Donald Trump’s tax returns: Why did the Internal Revenue Service fail to audit Trump’s taxes during the first two years of his presidency, as required by law? There’s a growing mountain of circumstantial evidence suggesting that Trump used political pressure and strategic appointments of loyalists to block IRS auditors from doing their job.

If that’s the case, it would hardly be surprising, given Trump’s track record. But it would mean that someone, somewhere, violated the law, possibly at Trump’s behest. Either way, the matter requires further investigation — a dubious prospect by the House as it transitions from Democratic to Republican control.

The most probable choice for the next House speaker, Trump loyalist Kevin McCarthy, is on record as having repeatedly railed against beefed-up IRS staffing, portraying the agency in evil-versus-good terms. It’s as if he thinks it’s a crime for the agency to pursue Americans who evade paying the taxes they owe. McCarthy falsely asserts there’s a Democrat plot to deploy a “new army of 87,000 IRS agents” to target Americans with incomes of less than $75,000.

The ones who are most abusing the law are the nation’s richest — people like Trump — whose tax-skirting exploits have robbed the national treasury of an estimated $7 trillion over the past decade, according to The New York Times.

A major part of the problem is that the IRS is ridiculously understaffed, even at its current level of 80,000 total employees, the same staffing level it had in 1970. Since then, the ranks of billionaires has grown exponentially, and they hire expensive accounting firms to identify every loophole possible to help their clients escape paying their fair share. Trump’s 2017 tax reform made it even easier for the rich to avoid paying taxes.

Trump managed to pay zero taxes in 2020 and $750 in taxes for both 2016 and 2017 by claiming millions of dollars in dubious losses. Six years of his tax returns, which were being prepared this month for imminent release, show various kinds of questionable deductions that deserve heavy IRS scrutiny.

But it’s not a question of whether his tax deductions were unlawful. Rather, it’s a question of the law, which requires the IRS to audit the returns of every sitting president. That didn’t happen for the first two years of Trump’s presidency. Trump fought hard in court to block the Ways and Means Committee from accessing his tax records, but the Supreme Court ultimately ruled in the committee’s favor.

When it comes to ensuring full accountability of any president or ex-president, Congress and the Justice Department should spare no effort investigating to ensure the IRS performs its job rigorously.

No one should get a free pass.