The House Ways and Means Committee plans to release Donald Trump‘s tax returns on Friday, according to a committee spokesperson.
The committee voted last week on a party-line vote to make the returns public, and it had planned to release the documents as early as last Wednesday, but the release has been delayed because staffers are still redacting sensitive personal information like Social Security numbers from the documents.
As part of the House’s pro forma session on Friday, six years of Trump’s personal returns and some of his business returns are expected to be placed in the Congressional Record. CNN broke the news of the latest delay.
The committee’s time is running out, as Republicans will take control when the new Congress convenes next week.
The committee obtained the returns in November after years of legal battles for the closely guarded documents, which previous presidents have routinely made public over the last four decades.
Trump’s refusal to release his tax returns sparked speculation about what he was trying to conceal, whether it was foreign business dealings, a smaller fortune than he’d claimed publicly, or whether he paid less in taxes than the average American.
The case was heard by the Supreme Court, which rejected Trump’s last-ditch appeal in a brief order issued just before Thanksgiving.
According to a 39-page report released last week by the Joint Committee on Taxation, Trump has paid very little in taxes, including only $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017, and none in 2020.
The report also discovered that, despite IRS policy mandating mandatory audits of presidents, the agency did not begin reviewing his taxes until after the Ways and Means Committee requested information about the mandatory audits in 2019.
