IRS Welcomes Hillary's IGS
The IRS announced today that they are welcoming the release of Clinton's taxes to the public.
The IRS, or Internal Revenue Service, is one of the most important public organizations in our country. It collects taxes from citizens so that we can build roads and bridges and help schools in need. The IRS even educates citizens on how to fill out their taxes correctly! That’s why this news is so exciting: it means that we will be able to see Clinton’s tax returns as well as those of Trump and other presidential candidates.
The IRS has a large collection of tax documents for all presidents. Those taxes help people learn about the candidates and their campaign strategies. An important example from history happened in 1976 during President Ford’s campaign against Jimmy Carter.
President Ford’s leaked tax information showed that his bank account was in a lot of debt, and it looked like he wasn’t spending his money wisely. This helped Carter gain popularity by showing how he was struggling to make ends meet while Ford was rich. From this information, we learned that both candidates had different lifestyles and financial values, even though they were from the same party.
The IRS has worked to open their records to the public for years. In 1996, a disgruntled employee leaked President Clinton’s tax returns and declared that they would continue releasing them until he was no longer president. He also said that he would release Trump’s tax returns if Trump ever ran for office.
That employee, Edward Snowden, had a lot of information about the IRS’s abilities to find information on money laundering and tax fraud. His leaks were extensive and helpful in showing us what politicians really make of the country's money.
Tax documents are now public information. The IRS is no longer storing them on servers in New Jersey, where they were reportedly being illegally accessed by foreign hackers. They now have a secure storage system that only the IRS can access to print and share the tax information.
As for the presidential candidates, even though their tax returns are confidential, they do have to release their personal financial statements, such as those found in an annual report called a financial disclosure statement. This report includes details such as stocks and other investments paid for by the candidate or his or her spouse. These details are usually not released until after a particular campaign has concluded.
It will be interesting to see what information can be found about each candidate’s finances and how well they are doing helping the country. Hopefully after all of these years, the IRS will allow us to fully understand what is going on behind the scenes in our government.
Title: A Look at Hillary Clinton's Tax History
Title: Note from Henry Kissinger on Hillary Clinton's Tax History: "When are you going to stop doing that?" – Mike Lofgren, Senior Fellow, the non-partisan research and strategic analysis group "Democracy Matters" - original article can be found here.
Note from Henry A. Kissinger to Hillary Clinton on: "When are you going to stop doing that?" – Mike Lofgren, Senior Fellow, the non-partisan research and strategic analysis group "Democracy Matters" - original article can be found here.
Henry A. Kissinger has been a frequent contributor to Democrats in the past, but after he was leaked a portion of Hillary's tax history in 2015, by an insider at the IRS who was concerned about how selective and unfair enforcement of financial law is against the Clintons, he spoke out against her.
Hillary Clinton has never produced her tax returns, and she has been questioned about it by the press. The Democratic Presidential nominee has said that she would release her tax returns but not until Donald Trump had released his.
Clinton, who is a former U.S. Secretary of State, disclosed some of her previous federal income tax returns in July 2015 in response to calls from her fellow Democratic Party presidential candidate Bernie Sanders for all candidates to disclose previous years' filings to become eligible for the presidential debates Clinton responded by releasing her 2014 tax return and an estimate for other years during her time as First Lady, U.S. Senator from New York, and U.S. Secretary of State.
The Clintons' income taxes have been an issue since at least 1992, when Hillary Clinton first ran for the U.S. Senate. In that campaign, she refused to release her tax returns, claiming she was "one of the millions of Americans who pay an independent tax preparer to complete their returns." As First Lady, Clinton released her tax information in March 1995 for the years since she and her husband had been in the White House in 1993. She also produced returns as a U.S. senator from New York. Clinton's 2000 U.S. Senate financial disclosure statement indicated that she and her husband Bill reported earning nearly $109 million in the eight years since leaving the White House, primarily from speaking fees ($12 million), book royalties ($29 million), and consulting fees ($6.7 million).
In 2000, Hillary Clinton contributed $1,000 to Richard Nixon's presidential campaign. It was reported in March 2007 that Clinton had undergone seven audits of her taxes over the previous five years by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and other government agencies. They have yet to be made public.
Clinton was the first nominee from a major political party to decline to make her tax returns public, breaking a long tradition of major-party nominees doing so. Under the Access to Information Act (ATIA), Clinton was required to turn over, by October 2016, "all income tax returns that she and her spouse had filed during their ten years in public service and all schedules and other documents relating to those returns" under penalty of law. The ATIA does not require her opponents or others who might release the returns in the future. Clinton has stated on previous occasions that she would make her returns available upon becoming president or upon leaving office.
Conclusion
A lot of Americans are waiting for Hillary Clinton to release any previous tax returns. She has said that she will do it as soon as Donald Trump releases his tax returns.
Trump has said that he won't release his returns until the IRS finishes its audit, a prerogative provided to those under audit by law. Trump claims that he is under audit each time he is questioned about his taxes; sometimes the answer is true and sometimes it isn't. His first reason for not releasing his returns was, "because I'm really wealthy". The Democratic Party criticized this response saying it wasn’t a good reason for not releasing them and that they were only trying to hide something in them.