Donald Trump's tax returns he tried to keep secret for the last six years have been released.
The Democratic-controlled House Ways and Means Committee voted last week to release the returns after the US Supreme Court cleared the way for Trump's returns to be handed over to Congress amid a three-year legal fight.
The committee obtained six years of Trump’s personal and business tax records, from 2015 to 2020, with the only redactions from the filings including his social security numbers and contact details.
They span nearly 6,000 pages, including more than 2,700 pages of individual returns from Trump and his wife, Melania, and more than 3,000 pages in returns for Trump’s business entities.
The former president has criticised the decision to publish his tax returns, he said in a statement: "The Democrats should have never done it, the Supreme Court should have never approved it, and it’s going to lead to horrible things for so many people.
"The radical, left Democrats have weaponised everything, but remember, that is a dangerous two-way street!”
He added the returns “once again show how proudly successful I have been and how I have been able to use depreciation and various other tax deductions as an incentive for creating thousands of jobs and magnificent structures and enterprises.”
The tax returns come following the last days of Democrats' control of the House as Trump's fellow Republicans prepare to retake power in the chamber.
Trump became the became the first presidential candidate in recent history to refuse to release the findings when he ran for the White House in 2016.
In October 2018, The New York Times published a Pulitzer Prize-winning series based on leaked tax records that showed that Trump received a modern-day equivalent of at least $413 million from his father’s real estate holdings, with much of that money coming from what the Times called “tax dodges” in the 1990s.
A second series in 2020 showed that Trump paid just $750 in federal income taxes in 2017 and 2018, as well as no income taxes at all in 10 of the past 15 years because he generally lost more money than he made.
Trump had refused to release his returns when he ran for president and had waged a legal battle to keep them secret while he was in the White House.
But the Supreme Court ruled last month that he had to turn them over to the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee.
The returns could take on added significance now that Trump has launched a campaign for the White House in 2024.
