On Tuesday, the Internal Revenue Service agreed to drop all pending probes of Trump over whether he’s paid his fair share of taxes, to settle a lawsuit brought by the president over a leak of his tax returns. That could include, assuming it was ongoing, a long-standing audit into a technique Trump reportedly used to avoid paying taxes years ago that could have hit him with an estimated $100 million bill if the IRS found wrongdoing.
Seems fair.
Details of IRS audits are not public and the merits of each side’s arguments are impossible to tell. But the way the president’s case against his own government’s IRS was resolved is highly unusual, experts say.
Trump sued the IRS, a federal agency within his administration, putting him in the unusual position of challenging an agency overseen by the executive branch he leads — a rare move, experts say, and possibly unprecedented. Then that agency decided, in another unusual move, to grant him immunity.
Unprecedented and, how shall I put this – flagrantly corrupt.
Under the settlement to resolve Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit over the 2018 leak of his tax returns to The New York Times, the U.S. is “forever barred and precluded” from examining or prosecuting Trump, his sons and the Trump Organization’s current tax filings, according to a one-page document released Tuesday. That was quietly added to an original settlement establishing a $1.8 billion fund to compensate people who Trump thinks were improperly investigated by the government.
Tax experts say this grant of immunity is shocking in the breadth of protection it offers the president and could undermine confidence in the fairness of the tax system.
Why yes, it is shocking, and yes, it could, in fact inevitably will, cause people to think the system is not 100% fair.
The IRS probe revolved around whether Trump doubled-dipped in cutting his taxes, according to a 2024 report by The New York Times and ProPublica — specifically whether he used the same losses from his Chicago skyscraper to cut them twice in future filings, a big no-no.
The report said Trump could owe more than $100 million, including penalties, if he were to lose the audit battle.
Now the Justice Department has moved to “wipe his slate clean,” said tax expert Brandon DeBot, calling that an “extraordinary action” in the message it sends to the country.
You mean the message that Trump can do whatever he wants all the time? Yes, that is rather irritating.
“This is the president trying to play every role in the system, acting as plaintiff, defendant, and his own judge and jury to extract extraordinary windfalls,” said New York University’s DeBot, adding that giving broad immunity “stretches beyond what DOJ actually has authority to do.”
Isn’t Trump an adorable scamp?
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