Business

The IRS turned over Nixon’s tax returns the same day a congressional panel asked for them

By Jeff Stein
July 25

The Internal Revenue Service turned President Richard Nixon’s tax returns over to a congressional committee the same day in 1973 that the panel requested them for a review, according to letters released by House Democrats on Thursday. ... The newly released documents appear to contradict the Trump administration’s claims that House Democrats’ demands for the president’s tax returns are “unprecedented,” and suggest a split between this administration and past IRS officials over the interpretation of the law.

Congressional Republicans denied any similarity between the two episodes, pointing out that Nixon requested the investigation into his returns while Trump has not.

On Dec. 13, 1973, Laurence N. Woodworth of the Joint Committee on Taxation asked the IRS commissioner to review Nixon’s tax returns from 1969 through 1972, according to the documents. Nixon had asked the congressional committee to review the documents amid the widening Watergate scandal.

In a letter to the committee also dated Dec. 13, 1973, IRS Commissioner Donald C. Alexander said that enclosed in his response were attachments of “true copies of the original joint federal income tax returns filed by Richard M. and Patricia R. Nixon” for the years requested.

[Confidential draft IRS memo says tax returns must be given to Congress unless president invokes executive privilege]
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Jeff Stein is a policy reporter for The Washington Post. He was a crime reporter for the Syracuse Post-Standard and, in 2014, founded the local news nonprofit the Ithaca Voice in Upstate New York. He was also a reporter for Vox. Follow https://twitter.com/jstein_wapo