Democrats May Regret Compromising Taxpayer Privacy To Get Trump

It took more than three years for House Democrats to obtain Donald Trump’s federal income tax returns, which they released to the public last Friday. That effort also required setting a dangerous precedent that threatens the privacy of Democrats as well as Republicans.

Every president since Jimmy Carter has voluntarily released his tax returns. Trump’s defiance of that tradition provoked much criticism and invited speculation about what he might be hiding. But federal law generally protects the confidentiality of information that Americans are legally required to share with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

Democrats found a way around that obstacle by invoking a provision of the Internal Revenue Code that authorizes the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee to request “any return or return information.” In April 2019, the committee’s chairman, Rep. Richard Neal (D‒Mass.), sought tax returns for then-President Trump and several of his businesses.

Neal said his committee was “considering legislative proposals and conducting oversight related to our Federal tax laws, including, but not limited to, the extent to which the IRS audits and enforces the Federal tax laws against a President.” The Treasury Department rejected Neal’s request.

That decision was backed by the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), which noted that “Congress could not constitutionally confer upon the Committee the right to compel the Executive Branch to disclose confidential information without a legitimate legislative purpose.” The OLC agreed with the Treasury Department that “the Committee’s asserted interest in reviewing the Internal Revenue Service’s audits of presidential returns was pretextual and that its true aim was to make the President’s tax returns public, which is not a legitimate legislative purpose.”

That take is consistent with what happened last week. The committee’s investigation found that the IRS had failed to comply with a regulation requiring annual audits of the pres