During the last GOP debate Donald Trump said that the reason why he is not releasing his tax returns is because he is being audited by the IRS. It is true that there is no legal impediment to Donald Trump releasing his tax returns, but there is a reason why no experienced tax attorney would recommend him do it while being audited. The tax professionals working on Donald Trump’s taxes are probably facing numerous formal and informal inquiries from the IRS “Wealth Squad,” which is a specialized group of examiners who focus on wealthy taxpayers. “The Wealth Squad is designed to allow the IRS to better understand the sophisticated financial, business and investment arrangements of the taxpayer by engaging a team of specialists to take a unified, holistic look at the entire web of inter-related entities controlled by a high wealth individual to discover the entire economic picture of the enterprise and to assess the tax compliance of that overall enterprise.”
See Charles Rettig, No Ordinary Audit: Donald Trump Is Facing The IRS ‘Wealth Squad,’ Forbes, February 28, 2016.
