Donald Trump‘s tax returns are opening up a can of worms about what might have been missed by the Internal Revenue Service over the last few years. Now, the Joint Committee on Taxation to House Ways & Means Committee Chair Richard Neal (D., Mass.) is making a recommendation that the loans the former president made to his adult children, Ivanka, Donald Jr., and Eric Trump should be looked into.
The report noted that Donald Trump may have used a “wealth-shifting technique,” per The Wall Street Journal, to avoid the 40% tax on gifted money.“ These loans are often the simplest and least expensive arrows in our estate-planning quiver,” Andrew Katzenstein, an estate-planning attorney with Proskauer told the publication. So, let’s just say this is a strategy only used by the very, very wealthy.
If Donald Trump used the IRS’ prescribed interest rate for the loans to his kids, he would be in the clear — but Congress is calling on further scrutiny based on the evidence they’ve seen. It just adds one more possible legal layer for the 45th president, who has multiple cases to contend with as he makes his third run for office.
The release of his tax returns is part of an investigative process to make sure all future presidents are audited each year under the Presidential Tax Filings and Audit Transparency Act of 2022 (if it passes). It would hopefully be a safety net to ensure that politicians in higher office are following the IRS’ rules and not skirting around the system.
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