The year 2022 was not a particularly good one for Donald Trump.

In August, the FBI searched his Mar-a-Lago, Florida home for classified documents taken from the White House.

In November, the majority of the candidates he installed who denied the election failed in the congressional elections.

In December, Trump's family business was convicted of tax fraud in New York.

In addition, the Congressional Committee on the storming of the Capitol stated in its final report that only one person was responsible for what happened: Trump himself. However, Trump could have averted the last defeat of the year if he had kept to the decades-old tradition of being American President disclose their tax records.

Sofia Dreisbach

North American political correspondent based in Washington.

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Instead, on Friday, the Congressional tax affairs committee released Trump's 2015-2020 tax returns -- a move Trump had been trying to prevent for years and one that may be particularly inconvenient during his renewed presidential bid.

The 45 documents contain thousands of pages of tax documents.

The Democratic-dominated body announced its decision last week and published a preliminary report showing inconsistencies in Trump's tax records.

Now everyone can see his financial situation during those years.

What is he hiding?

The more determined Trump was against the publication of the documents, the more distrust his critics grew: What is he hiding?

Did Trump cheat on taxes?

Gaining advantages as an entrepreneur?

What is particularly striking is that the former president claimed massive losses in the years examined, which reduced his tax payments to a minimum.

This is the main reason Trump paid little or no taxes between 2015 and 2020.

Corporations are taxed on their profits.

If the losses are so great that they exceed the income for the respective year, they can be offset against the income for the next few years and the tax burden can be reduced again.

In 2016, for example, Trump only paid $750 in income tax.

Although he reported $ 30 million in income - but also $ 60 million in losses.

In the first three years of his presidency, Trump paid only $1.1 million in income tax, and nothing in 2020 because he claimed a loss of $4.8 million.

Research by the New York Times revealed two years ago that Trump paid just $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017.

Shortly before his election in 2016, Trump said he had "brilliantly" used the tax laws to his and his companies' advantage.

He later broke his campaign promise to make his tax records public after his victory at the latest.

Instead, Trump said the papers were being checked, so he couldn't disclose them.

Private expenses declared as business expenses?

In its first report last week, the Tax Committee proved that this was not true, at least for the following tax years.

It states that the tax authority IRS did not properly check Trump.

In the four years of his tenure, she only started one compulsory exam and did not complete a single one.

The first review was also only initiated two years after he took office, when after the congressional elections the Democrats held the majority in the House of Representatives.

In 2019, Tax Committee Chairman Richard Neal requested that the tax records be released.

After years of litigation, Trump finally failed in November in the Supreme Court, which cleared the way for publication.

The tax documents provide evidence that Trump misreported personal expenses as business expenses.

In several cases, income and expenses match exactly.

For example, Melania Trump's model jobs are said to have earned $ 3,848 – and had expenses of $ 3,848.

In addition to the fact that exactly the same income and expenses are unlikely, there is also the question of why one should stick to transactions that ultimately do not bring in any money.

The tax records also fuel suspicions that Trump made hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of loans to his children Ivanka, Eric and Donald Jr. to avoid the 40 percent gift tax.

At the same time, they could deduct the interest they paid to him from their taxes.

Many Republicans denounce the quick release of Trump's tax records as politically motivated.

It is customary, but not required by law, for a president to disclose his taxes.

After the Supreme Court's decision, the Democratic-controlled committee didn't have much time to decide how to proceed.

On January 3, the new Congress meets with a Republican majority in the House of Representatives.

The Democrats justify the step by saying that they want to put the control of presidential income to the test as a whole – this also requires the publication of Trump’s tax documents.

Trump himself spoke last week of an "outrageous abuse of power" and lamented a witch hunt.