one Charles Rettig, who as IRS Commissioner (which is a "termed" position for 5 years) finally retired this past November. His replacememt appointed by Pres. Biden was Daniel Werfel, who was just confirmed just under a month ago.
Before this, both Rettig and his boss at the time - the infamous Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin, (befouling the position that Alexander Hamilton once had), blocked any type of actions against their benefactor.
I have posted the below in various threads the past year or so -
What we know about Donald Trump’s income tax history, by year
By Philip Bump
March 14, 2017 at 10:24 p.m. EDT
(snip)
2009: Possibly no taxes paid, under audit as of March. If the net operating loss from 1995 is still larger than income gained through this year. The March letter from Trump's accountants explained that returns prior to 2009 were no longer under audit. In the intervening seven months since that letter was released, the Trump campaign has neither released proof from the IRS that the audits are underway nor updated the status of any returns from the years 2009 to 2015. As far as we know, they are all still under audit.
2010: Possibly no taxes paid, under audit as of March. If the net operating loss from 1995 is still larger than income gained through this year.
2011: Under audit as of March.
2012: Under audit as of March.
2013: Under audit as of March.
2014: Under audit as of March.
2015: Under audit as of March. This is the most recent year for which Trump has filed taxes. They remain unseen, in a break with 40 years of tradition from presidential candidates.
(snip)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/10/01/what-we-know-about-donald-trumps-income-tax-history-by-year/
IRS commissioner Charles Rettig is the man standing between Congress and Trump’s tax returns
By Donna Borak, CNN
Published 2:42 AM EDT, Sun May 5, 2019
CNN — A showdown between the White House and House Democrats over the release of President Donald Trump’s personal tax returns comes down to one man: Charles Rettig, head of the Internal Revenue Service. Rettig, 62, a veteran California tax attorney, spent more than 35 years representing taxpayers in disputes with federal and state tax agencies until he was sworn in as IRS commissioner last October.
That makes him the only person in Washington with the authority to turn over the President’s personal tax returns under an obscure tax law – though Rettig has argued in hearings that the decision to comply with Democratic requests nonetheless rests with his boss, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Trump has refused to release his returns, first as a candidate and now as president, breaking precedent going back to Watergate. And he has held fast to that argument even after House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal of Massachusetts formally asked Rettig to release six years of Trump’s personal tax returns.
The latest deadline is Monday, after Mnuchin asked for more time to consult with Department of Justice lawyers. Treasury and IRS spokespeople did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Rettig was not a traditional choice by Trump to run an underfunded bureaucracy with nearly 80,000 employees.
Previous commissioners from the past two decades were picked for their deep business management experience. Rettig’s predecessor, John Koskinen, who left the job in November 2017, spent two decades as an executive of management consulting firm Palmieri Co. His predecessor, Douglas Shulman, a George W. Bush appointee, came to the agency after serving as vice chairman of the Finra, the finance industry self-regulator. Instead, Rettig, a Beverly Hills lawyer, who earned his economics degree from UCLA and went to Pepperdine University for law school, spent more three decades of his career representing wealthy taxpayers and businesses in complex disputes with the government.
(snip)
https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/05/politics/irs-commissioner-charles-rettig-trump-taxes
Long-Concealed Records Show Trump’s Chronic Losses and Years of Tax Avoidance
By Russ Buettner, Susanne Craig and Mike McIntire
Sept. 27, 2020
(snip)
The records reviewed by The Times indicate that Mr. Trump filed for the first of several tranches of his refund several weeks later, in January 2010. That set off what tax professionals refer to as a “quickie refund,” a check processed in 90 days on a tentative basis, pending an audit by the I.R.S.
His total federal income tax refund would eventually grow to $70.1 million, plus $2,733,184 in interest. He also received $21.2 million in state and local refunds, which often piggyback on federal filings. Whether Mr. Trump gets to keep the cash, though, remains far from a sure thing.
Refunds require the approval of I.R.S. auditors and an opinion of the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, a bipartisan panel better known for reviewing the impact of tax legislation. Tax law requires the committee to weigh in on all refunds larger than $2 million to individuals.
Records show that the results of an audit of Mr. Trump’s refund were sent to the joint committee in the spring of 2011. An agreement was reached in late 2014, the documents indicate, but the audit resumed and grew to include Mr. Trump’s returns for 2010 through 2013. In the spring of 2016, with Mr. Trump closing in on the Republican nomination, the case was sent back to the committee. It has remained there, unresolved, with the statute of limitations repeatedly pushed forward.
Precisely why the case has stalled is not clear. But experts say it suggests that the gap between the sides remains wide. If negotiations were to deadlock, the case would move to federal court, where it could become a matter of public record.
(snip)
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/09/27/us/donald-trump-taxes.html
IRS chief faces questions over audits of Trump foes
Biden administration officials had already begun interviewing potential replacements for Charles Rettig
By Jeff Stein
Updated July 7, 2022 at 4:55 p.m. EDT|Published July 7, 2022 at 12:03 p.m. EDT
The commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service faces a new onslaught of questions after a report Wednesday showed that two foes of President Donald Trump had been selected for a rare audit.
Charles Rettig, whose elevation by Trump to lead the service in 2018 surprised many tax professionals when it was announced, faced new scrutiny after the New York Times revealed that both former FBI director James B. Comey and his deputy, Andrew McCabe, were the subjects of highly unusual audits for which the IRS says were selected at random. The Washington Post has confirmed the audits.
Rettig was a tax attorney in Beverly Hills, Calif., when Trump put him in charge of the agency, which employs about 71,000 full-time staffers. He had defended a billionaire the IRS accused of hiding money in offshore accounts, a venture capitalist the agency alleged used sham accounting to shelter assets, and the heirs of a millionaire defense contractor who sought to fend off inheritance taxes.
He started out as a Trump ally when his four-year term began in 2018, shielding the former president’s tax returns from public view in the face of a House Democratic lawsuit. But Rettig has proved a willing partner for the Biden administration, as well, supporting its efforts to close the gap between what taxpayers owe and what they pay, and implementing expansive new stimulus measures.
(snip)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/07/07/trump-irs-rettig-audit/
There was an agreement last September for Oversight to get some financial records from Mazars -
Chairwoman Maloney’s Statement on Oversight Committee Securing Agreement to Obtain Former President Trump’s Financial Records
Sep 1, 2022
Press Release
Agreement with Trump and Accounting Firm Mazars USA Follows Committee’s Subpoena and Successful Litigation
Washington, D.C. (Sept. 1, 2022)—Today, Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, Chairwoman of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, issued the following statement after the Committee reached an agreement to end litigation filed by former President Trump and require the former President’s accounting firm, Mazars USA, to turn over his financial records to the Committee:
“After numerous court victories, I am pleased that my Committee has now reached an agreement to obtain key financial documents that former President Trump fought for years to hide from Congress. In April 2019, the Oversight Committee issued a lawful subpoena for financial records as part of our investigation into President Trump’s unprecedented conflicts of interest, self-dealing, and foreign financial ties. After facing years of delay tactics, the Committee has now reached an agreement with the former President and his accounting firm, Mazars USA, to obtain critical documents. These documents will inform the Committee’s efforts to get to the bottom of former President Trump’s egregious conduct and ensure that future presidents do not abuse their position of power for personal gain.”
Background:
At the beginning of the 116th Congress, the Oversight Committee launched several investigations of former President Trump’s conflicts of interest, inadequate financial disclosures, and violations of the Emoluments Clauses to determine the adequacy of existing laws and perform related agency oversight.
On February 27, 2019, President Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, testified before the Oversight Committee. He alleged that President Trump’s financial statements falsely represented the President’s assets and liabilities and that President Trump “inflated his total assets when it served his purposes” or, at other times, “deflated his assets to reduce his real estate taxes.”
As corroboration, Mr. Cohen produced portions of financial statements from 2011, 2012, and 2013—some of which were prepared by Mazars—which raised questions about President Trump’s representations on these forms and other financial disclosure documents, particularly relating to the President’s debts. Mr. Cohen also produced checks from President Trump and his business trust, some of which were signed after Mr. Trump became President, and Mr. Cohen testified that these payments were reimbursements of illegal hush-money payments made during the 2016 campaign.
On March 20, 2019, Chairman Elijah E. Cummings sent a letter to Mazars seeking key financial documents relating to these and other allegations, and on April 15, 2019, the Oversight Committee issued a subpoena to Mazars seeking four targeted categories of documents.
On May 20, 2019, after President Trump filed a lawsuit to prevent Mazars from complying with the Committee’s lawful subpoena, the D.C. District Court issued a ruling vindicating the authority of the Oversight Committee to investigate issues concerning the President and his companies. This ruling was upheld by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, and the full D.C. Circuit rejected Trump’s petition for en banc review.
On July 9, 2020, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Trump v. Mazars USA, LLP. The Court’s opinion reaffirmed the bedrock principle in our democracy that no one—not even the President—is above the law and announced a new standard for evaluating congressional subpoenas for the President’s personal information. The Supreme Court remanded the case to the lower courts to apply the new standard.
On August 11, 2021, a district court ruling confirmed that the Oversight Committee had “facially valid legislative purposes” in seeking documents in this investigation and upheld in part the Committee’s subpoena for financial information from President Trump and his businesses.
On July 8, 2022, the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that the Committee is authorized to obtain certain financial records and communications from former President Trump and his business entities covered by the Committee’s subpoena. The Court held that former “President Trump’s financial information would advance the Committee’s consideration of ethics reform legislation across all three of its investigative tracks,” including presidential ethics and conflicts of interest, presidential financial disclosures, and presidential adherence to Constitutional safeguards against foreign interference and undue influence.
Under the agreement reached by the Committee, former President Trump has agreed not to further appeal the D.C. Circuit’s ruling, and Mazars USA has agreed to comply with the court’s order and produce responsive documents to the Committee as expeditiously as possible.
###
Issues:
Ethics and Transparency
117th Congress
In the last article, as of the last election, Carolyn Maloney was re-districted in NY, was lumped into the same District as fellow Democrat Jerry Nadler, and lost to him, so she is no longer in Congress. Meanwhile, the GOP took over the House so I expect some of what was obtained by that Committee before the House flipped, may have gone to the J6 Committee and possibly had a referral to the IRS - but at that time, Rettig was still in there, but is thankfully gone now.
= new reply since forum marked as read
