Presidential Tax Returns
Individual income tax returns — including those of public figures — are private information, protected by law from unauthorized disclosure. Indeed, the Internal Revenue Service is barred from releasing any taxpayer information whatsoever, except to authorized agencies and individuals.
Like all other citizens, U.S. presidents enjoy this protection of their privacy. Since the early 1970s, however, most presidents and some vice presidents have chosen to release their returns publicly. In the hope of making this information more widely available, Tax Analysts has been collecting and archiving tax returns filed by American presidents, vice presidents, and candidates for over 20 years. Our archive of presidential tax returns can be seen below along with answers to some frequently asked questions.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Do you have President Trump’s tax returns?
We have the returns filed by President Donald Trump from 2015 through 2020. These returns were released by the House Ways and Means Committee. The committee voted along party lines to release the returns on December 20, 2022.
By law, the Ways and Means Committee may obtain, inspect, and even disclose the confidential tax information of any taxpayer, even without that taxpayer’s consent. The Senate Finance Committee and the Joint Committee on Taxation have identical authority under section 6103(f)(1) and (4)(A) of the Internal Revenue Code. University of Virginia tax and legal history scholar George K. Yin, who also served as chief of staff for the joint committee, explained this authority in a pathbreaking 2017 article for Tax Notes.
In addition to the 2015-2020 returns, we have copies of two pages from Trump’s 2005 return that were leaked in early 2017.
On September 27, 2020, The New York Times reported it had obtained 17 years’ worth of President Trump’s individual and corporate returns. The Times received those returns from anonymous sources and has said it will not release them publicly to protect those sources. The documents are not available to other news organizations at this time.
Current Administration
