(Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images; Taylor Le/Pacific Standard)
And we’ve come to the segment where Donald Trump defends his refusal to release his tax returns, citing an Internal Revenue Service audit. The IRS, however, has repeatedly said that Trump can absolutely release his returns during an audit.
This puts him in some rare air, as Elena Gooray reported for Pacific Standard:
Of 34 presidential and vice presidential candidates between 1976 and 2012, only seven declined to release tax records, Politifact found. Candidates varied in the number of years they released, with Mitt Romney sharing two years of reports and Barack Obama bringing his total to 11 years of records in 2012. The most tax-transparent presidential candidate to date has been Jeb Bush, who released 33 years’ worth of financial records.
Hillary Clinton has countered that “maybe he’s not as rich as he says he is.”