Taxpayer rights expert 'absolutely flabbergasted' that Donald Trump escaped IRS presidential audit: report

22 December 2022

Amid a House committee’s finding that Donald Trump somehow escaped tax return audits by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) during his presidency, spokespeople for Barack Obama and Joe Biden say that was not the case for the former and current presidents, reports the New York Times.

Trump appointed Charles P. Rettig as IRS commissioner about half way through his term. Neither Rettig, nor his predecessors could confirm whether the agency followed proper protocol for presidential audits during their time in that role.

NYT reports that Rettig said in an email this week that he didn’t attempt to involve himself in Trump’s audit.

Nina C. Olsen, a former national taxpayer rights expert, told NYT “I’m absolutely flabbergasted. It’s disturbing. You have a process where you’re auditing the president, you better be auditing the president.”

Rettig wrote in the email, “I am not aware of any taxpayer receiving special treatment at any time, before or during my term as commissioner. Further, at no time did I make, nor am I aware that anyone else made, any decision to somehow limit resources available to conduct examinations under the mandatory examination process.”

Regarding his involvement in the audit, he said, “I had no involvement in the process of selecting for examination or the conduct of an examination of any return regarding any taxpayer.”

After the House committee noted their discovery of the IRS’s failure to audit Trump, Democratic Senator Ron Wyden shared thoughts on what he’s calling a “blockbuster.”

He said, “The I.R.S. was asleep at the wheel, and the presidential audit program is broken. There is no justification for the failure to conduct the required presidential audits until a congressional inquiry was made.”

Ironically, the agency’s Internal Review Manual calls for a mandatory presidential return audit. However, the House committee noted that that likely became hard to do, as the IRS had designated only one person to carry out Trump’s audit, “ despite the unusual complexity of his business entities and partnerships,” NYT reports.

The committee noted that Internal IRS documents state, “it is not possible to obtain the resources available to examine all potential issues” that could come up in auditing Trump’s returns.

The agency said, “To do a thorough review of these returns, we would need a team much larger than the current team.”

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