WASHINGTON: Hillary Clinton has attacked Donald Trump for his refusal to release his tax returns, criticising the billionaire businessman at a campaign event.
“You have to ask yourself, why doesn’t the want to release them?” asked Clinton at a crowd at a community college gymnasium in Blackwood, New Jersey.
“Because when you’re running for president and you become the nominee, that’s kind of expected,” she said.
During the 2016 campaign, Clinton has released the last eight years of her personal tax records. That, combined with records from her last presidential run and her husband’s presidential returns, means the Clintons have released all tax returns since 1977.
Clinton called on voters to keep pushing for Trump to release his tax returns, and suggested that her campaign would continue to push hard for their release during the general election. “We’ll get around to that too,” said Clinton.
The presumptive Republican nominee has a history of bankruptcies. In 2009, he sued an author of a book about him who declared he was only worth $150m to $250m, but a judge dismissed the case.
The likely Democratic nominee also dismissed Trump’s tax plan as “written by a billionaire for billionaires”, noting its tax cuts for people who earn over $1m a year.
But Trump is standing by his decision to not release a tax return until an audit on his returns by the Internal Revenue Service was finished.
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“There’s nothing to learn from them,” said Trump in an interview with the Associated Press on Wednesday.
“Now, I hope it gets finished soon. And if it gets finished soon, I put it out immediately because there’s nothing there. But until you get finished, you won’t,” said Trump.
There is no IRS rule stating that people undergoing an audit cannot release tax returns.
On Tuesday, the 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney slammed Trump’s refusal to release the forms as a “disqualifying” offense.
It’s not a requirement for presidential candidates to release their tax returns, although it has become the norm. When Bernie Sanders took months to release his latest tax return, the Clinton campaign used it against him when he queried her on the release of transcripts from her paid speeches to Goldman Sachs.
