OPP poll.........President Trump's Taxes (Page 2): This is why we HAVE to WIN Congress back!!!!!!!!

proud republican Loc: RED CALIFORNIA

rafterman wrote:

Trump’s taxes may be released to grand jury, supre... (show quote)

This is why we HAVE to WIN Congress back!!!!!!!!

Sicilianthing

proud republican wrote:

I'm convinced that he is surrounded by the enemies from his own party !

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Like I keep saying something isn’t right and its becoming obvious.

Sicilianthing

PeterS wrote:

It's more like he's surrounded by enemies in his o... (show quote)

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Whattabuncha crap !
It’s all just to make money... watch what they do to her next.

Sicilianthing

rafterman wrote:

The Constitution DOES NOT require the release of t... (show quote)

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Too late he’s screwed... SCOTUS saw something else in Law that we did not.

Sicilianthing

Tiptop789 wrote:

Another trump supporter books passage on the SS Tr... (show quote)

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Trump doesn’t care it’s just the one’s it will expose in there he’s trying to protect like Deutsche bank et alia.

Sicilianthing

proud republican wrote:

This is why we HAVE to WIN Congress back!!!!!!!!

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But what if that doesn’t happen and it’s not looking good.

This is why I pound you guys everyday for Plans B and C

EconomistDon

Tiptop789 wrote:

Another trump supporter books passage on the SS Tr... (show quote)

Dream on Tiptoe. What a flake.

Sicilianthing

EconomistDon wrote:

Dream on Tiptoe. What a flake.

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We call him Tippy... it’s awesome ...

TexCan came up with it...

I love that name... TIPPY !

EconomistDon

Lonewolf wrote:

The law says if congress asks for them the government shall supply them.
He said he would, but that was just another lie.
When congress asked for Nixon's they got them the same day!
Just about all presidents have voluntarily released theirs.
The difference between them and trump, simple trumps a crook.

Talk about crooks. The Constitution REQUIRES that P**********l candidates must be natural-born citizens. When Congress asked for Obama's birth certificate, it took TWO YEARS for him to produce a F**E certificate. You have no room to complain, LonelyOne.

EconomistDon

proud republican wrote:

Supreme Court sends case on on Trump's Grand Jury subpoena back to lower court....What does it mean ???????

My interpretation is that his tax returns could be required and handed over in a criminal case. So the Supreme Court could not say unequivocally that his taxes were out of touch in all cases. But they specifically said that Congress could not have them, which means that they are not to be turned over for frivolous political reasons. And that is all that is behind the Democrat demands for the taxes -- a political witch-hunt. "Show me the man, I will find a crime".

EconomistDon

Sicilianthing wrote:

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We call him Tippy... it’s awesome ...

TexCan came up with it...

I love that name... TIPPY !

I think of him as Tiptoe because he reminds me of Tiny Tim and his song "Tiptoe through the Tulips". Tiny sang like a girl in his song "Tiptoe". And that feeds further intro my impression of Tiptop.

But Tippy is cool.

Blade_Runner Loc: DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

PeterS wrote:

What amazes me is that the liberal POWERS THAT BE set the course for Obama to be president from the moment he was born. Clever somes-a-b***hes weren't they...

Yep, Frank Marshall Davis, a card carrying C*******t, was B. Hussein's mentor. Told the boy he wasn't going to college to get an education, he was going there to be trained.

Blade_Runner Loc: DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

EconomistDon wrote:

My interpretation is that his tax returns could be required and handed over in a criminal case. So the Supreme Court could not say unequivocally that his taxes were out of touch in all cases. But they specifically said that Congress could not have them, which means that they are not to be turned over for frivolous political reasons. And that is all that is behind the Democrat demands for the taxes -- a political witch-hunt. "Show me the man, I will find a crime".

Donald Trump began his business career 48 years ago. Seems to me if he'd c***ted or committed some kind of tax fraud, the IRS would have nailed him a long time ago.

Inside the IRS's audits of the president

By BRIAN FALER

It’s rare for IRS officials to have top-secret security clearances — unless they're auditing the president’s tax returns.

The people who examine those most sensitive of filings work deep within the IRS bureaucracy and, typically, their colleagues at the agency have no idea they're vetting the president’s taxes. Even the agency’s commissioner is kept in the dark — they never see the president’s returns.

House Democrats’ fight to see President Donald Trump’s tax filings for themselves is putting a spotlight on the IRS’s longstanding policy of automatically auditing every president and vice president. Little is publicly known about how that process works, and it hasn’t been much of an issue until now.

But it is central to the Democrats’ effort. While they have made no secret of their desire to examine Trump's long-hidden returns for evidence of wrongdoing, a lawsuit they filed to spring them focuses instead on the audit process.

Democrats argue there is a conflict of interest in having the IRS audit someone who is ultimately the head of the agency, and say they don’t know how rigorous the examinations are.

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In the lawsuit they filed earlier this month in federal court, Democrats say they are concerned the White House could pressure IRS agents to go easy on Trump’s returns, and that they need his tax documents to understand how seriously the agency is vetting them.

“The mandatory p**********l audit program might not be functioning effectively, in part because of the absence of safeguards to protect IRS employees and the audit process itself from improper influence,” the suit says.

The emphasis on wanting to oversee the agency’s audits serves an important legal purpose because many experts say the Democrats need a legitimate reason, related to their jobs as lawmakers, to seek Trump's returns.

Republicans scoff, saying Democrats don’t really care about the audits and are just using it as an excuse to get the returns in hopes of finding things they can use to embarrass Trump politically.

At the same time, some former IRS officials with knowledge of how the p**********l auditing process works reject the suggestions that it is vulnerable to interference from the White House.

Examinations of the president’s returns are conducted by multiple career employees, they say, and there are safeguards against political interference – not least of which is a 1998 law that makes White House meddling in audits a felony.

Mark Matthews, a former deputy commissioner of the IRS, says he believes House Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal, who is spearheading the suit, has a right to review the p**********l auditing process. But he also says he doesn’t expect the Massachusetts Democrats to find anything nefarious.

“It’s extremely unlikely to me that the White House would be able to put their thumb on it,” he said. “There’s a lot of sensitivity at the agency around potential political interference.”

The legal dispute centers on an IRS policy dating to 1977, adopted in the wake of a tax scandal involving President Richard Nixon, that was designed to prevent the agency from having to make the politically fraught decision of whether to audit a sitting president. The policy simply said all presidents would be automatically examined every year. The Carter administration said the practice also “helps to allay any concerns in the public about the president’s payments of taxes.”

Trump has complained about audits for years, calling them unfair and claiming even before he was elected that he had been subjected to them annually. At one point, he suggested he was being targeted by the IRS because he is a “strong Christian.”

But Trump has simultaneously cited the agency’s audits as a reason not to release his returns.

The IRS has long had special procedures for handling the president’s returns, beginning with who does the handling.

The returns bypass the IRS commissioner, because he is a political appointee, and instead are sent directly to the deputy commissioner for services and enforcement, a top career official at the agency. The deputy commissioner often hands the returns off to his staff for examination, without even looking at them.

“Never opened the envelopes,” said Steven Miller, another former deputy commissioner. “Just sent them on.”

The president’s filings are typically first reviewed by a small team of people who decide what the major issues with the returns are likely to be.

A computer system is available to help them figure out what areas are likely to be problematic. It identifies statistical outliers — for example, if someone in a particular income range is taking a deduction that relatively few other people earning similar amounts claim, the system would f**g it.

They then hand the documents off to an examiner or, if the returns are particularly complicated, to a team of examiners who do the actual audit.

Relatively few IRS employees have top-secret clearances, but, because of the sensitivity, clearances are required to handle the president’s filings. The examiners are not supposed to talk about their work with colleagues. The agency’s employee manual reminds them to “ensure that other employees in the immediate area cannot view the returns.”

“Keep the returns locked in a secure drawer or cabinet while you are away from your work area and the returns are still under your control,” it advises.

Once the audits are completed they are sent to another group of reviewers, whose job is to vet their colleagues’ audits. Essentially, they perform a quality check.

“Anytime an examination is done, particularly on a large return or a sensitive return, there is then a review done to make sure the auditor didn’t miss anything,” said John Dalrymple, a former IRS deputy commissioner who, until 2017, oversaw the staff that audited the president’s returns.

What the agency decides — if the president owes money, for example — is confidential. The IRS keeps p**********l returns forever, and they are permanently protected by taxpayer secrecy laws.

Arguing the auditing process is vulnerable to political interference, Neal ticks off a number of concerns in his lawsuit. P**********l audits are subject to a “high degree of discretion” because a “revenue agent can cut an audit short where the agency finds it is ‘not in the government’s best interest to continue.’”

Neal questions whether the agency is up to the “singularly complicated audit presented by this president’s tax returns.” He says the IRS’s employee manual is vague on some aspects of how audits are handled. “For example, the manual does not specify the scope, length, or depth of the IRS’s examination of the returns.”

Neal also cites a June meeting during which, he claims, Treasury officials acknowledged the IRS’s manual “diverged in numerous respects from current practice,” and he says that many of his questions about the audit process went unanswered, without offering specifics.

A Neal spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

Though they say auditing the president is a sensitive task, former IRS officials describe it as an uncontroversial process within the agency. They note the department has been auditing presidents for 40 years, and employees p***e themselves on being nonpartisan administrators of the tax code.

“If [IRS Commissioner Chuck] Rettig went to an employee and started asking about the p**********l audit, they would look at him sideways,” said Matthews, who also served as head of the agency’s criminal investigations division.

IRS policy as well as a 1998 law require employees to report political interference to the independent Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration for investigation. That law makes it illegal for the White House to ask the agency to stop, start or modify an audit. Both White House interference and failing to report that interference is punishable by up to five years in prison.

There are so many people involved in a p**********l audit, Dalrymple said, that it’s unlikely the White House could attempt to steer an audit without it being reported.

“It would have to be an incredible conspiracy to be able to pull that off,” said Dalrymple, who spent nearly 35 years at the agency. “It’s unfathomable.”

“If I were to direct an auditor to do something on a return as a deputy commissioner, I’m pretty certain that auditor would turn me into the inspection service in a heartbeat.”

Sicilianthing

EconomistDon wrote:

I think of him as Tiptoe because he reminds me of Tiny Tim and his song "Tiptoe through the Tulips". Tiny sang like a girl in his song "Tiptoe". And that feeds further intro my impression of Tiptop.

But Tippy is cool.

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Ha...totally...

Kickaha Loc: Nebraska

Tiptop789 wrote:

Another trump supporter books passage on the SS Tr... (show quote)

Correct, Congress does have the right to review tax returns. But this is only if the returns provide insight concerning pending legislation. They don't have the right to examine tax returns just looking to see what they can find.