President-elect Donald Trump will reportedly be audited every year during his White House term due to an obscure provision in the IRS manual – but that does not mean he cannot change the measure, or simply refuse to make the returns public.
Both the president and vice president have been under a mandatory annual audit by the IRS since the Watergate era of the 1970s under the measure, McClatchy DC reported.
"I don't believe there is anything that would prevent the president from . . . instructing that this precautionary measure of the IRS audits be rescinded," Norman Eisen, a former special counsel to the Obama White House, told McClatchy DC. "He could theoretically do it."
Every president since Nixon has released tax returns, but if Trump chooses to not release them, the only way the public would know how much he pays in taxes is if there is an unlawful leak, or if he faced criminal prosecution for tax fraud.
"The returns are protected by law," Joe Thorndike, a tax historian who runs the website taxhistory.org, told McClatchy DC. "He's not required to release anything so we have to rely on the agency."
Trump has resisted releasing his taxes throughout the presidential campaign, citing ongoing audits – and after former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton alleged at a September debate he had not paid federal income taxes for years, he replied, "That makes me smart."
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.