by Richard Cowan
washingtonDec. 1 – The chairman of the US congressional committee that should have access to Donald Trump’s tax returns said Thursday that he supports a bill that would require future presidents to make that information public.
Richard Neal, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, told reporters, “I think it’s fair to say that future presidents will be required to release their tax returns.”
Neill said he did not know whether US presidential candidates should be included in that requirement.
Former President Trump, unlike his predecessors in recent decades, refused to voluntarily release his tax returns, claiming they were subject to audit by the Internal Revenue Service.
Neal spoke to reporters after a closed-door meeting with Democrats on the committee to review the committee’s complex legal and privacy hurdles as it reviews and processes Trump and his companies’ tax returns spanning 2015 to 2020 . The panel wants to review the audit process for those documents.
Neill used his comments to reporters to counter a “false” suggestion that Democrats on the panel were meeting Thursday to review Trump’s tax returns.
The US Supreme Court on November 22 authorized the release of those statements to Neill’s committee, which had requested them for nearly four years.
With the start of a new Congress on Jan. 3, which will usher in Republican control of the House, Neal’s panel won’t have much time to finish its work and decide on any formal committee response to the Trump documents. can be obtained from ,
But Neill, a Democrat, said: “I want to stick with this to see it end.”
