US supreme court allows Congress access to Trump’s tax records

The United States supreme court is to allow members of Congress to gain access to the tax records of former president Donald Trump.

The decision ends a battle which has lasted several years between a congressional committee and Mr Trump who, unlike most other presidents and White House candidates, did not release his tax details.

Mr Trump maintained for years that his tax records were still under audit.

The court did not make any public comment on its order. It rejected Mr Trump’s request for a declaration that would have prevented the US treasury department from giving six years of tax returns relating to the former president and some of his businesses to the Ways and Means Committee of the House of Representatives.

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The chairman of the committee, Richard Neal, a Democrat from Massachusetts, originally requested the documents. He said his panel would “now conduct the oversight that we’ve sought for the last three and a half years”.

Mr Neal did not say whether the committee would publish the tax returns.

The battle over Mr Trump’s tax records goes back to 2016 when he refused to release them, breaking with modern precedent set by presidential candidates and sitting presidents.

When Democrats regained the majority in the House of Representatives following elections in late 2018, Mr Neal asked the US treasury department to provide Mr Trump’s tax returns under a law that gives the Ways and Means Committee the power to see such documentation belonging to any taxpayer.

But the Trump administration refused to let the department turn over the records.

While Mr Neal has said the committee was studying whether changes were needed to a US internal revenue service programme that audited presidents, Mr Trump’s supporters argued that it was a pretext for a politically-motivated fishing expedition and that Congress lacked a legitimate legislative purpose in seeking the records.

In July 2019, the House of Representatives went to court seeking to enforce its request. Mr Trump’s legal team promised to fight the case “tooth and nail”. The case eventually found its way to the highest court in the US, which issued its order on Tuesday.

The committee may now receive the documents next week but will be in a race against time to carry out its planned work.

A Republican majority will take over the House of Representatives in January and is almost certain to drop any work relating to Mr Trump’s tax affairs.