The House committee with oversight of the IRS has scheduled a meeting for next week to discuss how to handle private taxpayer information — believed to be former President Donald Trump’s tax returns.
The Ways and Means Committee obtained Mr. Trump’s taxes after a yearslong legal battle, and now Democrats are racing to figure out what to do with the information before their control of the committee expires early next year.
Committee Chair Richard Neal, Massachusetts Democrat, announced the meeting, saying that lawmakers could consider “documents protected under Internal Revenue Code section 6103.” That’s the part of the law that protects taxpayers’ information from public release, but it also gives Congress extraordinary powers to request the information.
The session will take place behind closed doors Tuesday.
The Supreme Court late last month cleared the last legal hurdle to the committee obtaining the information from the IRS under President Biden.
Mr. Neal’s notice did not list options for what the committee might do with the information, but Republican lawmakers have demanded the panel keep the former president’s taxes secret, saying it would set a bad precedent for taxpayers if Congress used political investigations to expose citizens’ financial information.
Release of the information would be particularly fraught given that Mr. Trump has announced he is a candidate for president in 2024.
Committee Democrats say they wanted to see the president’s tax returns to evaluate the operation of a law that requires the IRS to audit the president and vice president.
Mr. Trump’s finances have been of intense interest, particularly since he didn’t release tax returns as a candidate or as president, breaking what had become standard practice.
His refusal prompted expansive speculation about what information might be in the taxes, including theories about ties to Russian interests or mob interests.
What information has become public, including IRS forms leaked to The New York Times, has not borne out those theories. Instead, they showed chronic losses and use of tax dodges, the newspaper reported.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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