Presidential Candidates Must Release Tax Returns, Says New Bill

Oregon Senator Ron Wyden wants to make sure if you run for President and become the nominee of your party, you have to release your tax returns.

Wyden introduced legislation this week that would require candidates to release their personal tax returns within 15 days of becoming the nominee of a party.

The Presidential Tax Transparency Act would require the release of the three most recent years of personal returns.

"Since the days of Watergate, the American people have had an expectation that nominees to be the leader of the free world not hide their finances and personal tax returns," said Wyden.

"Tax returns deliver honest answers to key questions from the American public."

Meanwhile, the chairman of Donald Trump's campaign, Paul Manafort, told The Huffington Post that the "only people who want the tax returns are the people who want to defeat him."

He told the site "I will be surprised if he puts them out" and, even if he did, they are probably too complicated for the American people to understand.

"I wouldn’t understand them, so how are the American people going to?" he said.

If Trump does not release his taxes before the election, he would become the first major-party nominee since Gerald Ford in 1976 to not release his taxes.

His decision stands in contrast to his presumptive opponent, Hillary Clinton, who has posted decades of her joint returns with former President Bill Clinton on her campaign website.

In a Facebook post earlier this month, the 2012 Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, said "It is disqualifying for a modern-day presidential nominee to refuse to release tax returns to the voters, especially one who has not been subject to public scrutiny in either military or public service. Tax returns provide the public with its sole confirmation of the veracity of a candidate's representations regarding charities, priorities, wealth, tax conformance, and conflicts of interest.

"Further, while not a likely circumstance, the potential for hidden inappropriate associations with foreign entities, criminal organizations, or other unsavory groups is simply too great a risk to ignore for someone who is seeking to become commander-in-chief."

Romney had faced similar criticism. While he made his 2010 return public in January 2012, he refused to released his 2011 return.

It was only after a barrage of criticism from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that Romney released his returns that September - three weeks after he had been nominated.

Romney's opponent, Barack Obama, had released his returns soon after Tax Day.

The only other major candidate to wait until after the convention to release taxes was Ronald Reagan in 1980.

Since that time, all major candidates released their returns before the conventions.

In 1988 - Bush and Dukakis released their returns over the summer but before the conventions.

In 1992, George Bush and Bill Clinton released their returns within days of having filed. Bush's were released on April 16 and Clinton's on April 18.

That was also the year when the only Presidential candidate since the 1968 didn't release any tax information: Ross Perot.

Trump's position on releasing his taxes as evolved over the course of his campaign.

Last October, he appeared on This Week on ABC and told George Stephanopoulos "I'm thinking about it" when asked if he would release his returns.

Then, appearing on Meet the Press in January, he said his staff was working on getting his returns ready for release.

"“We're working on that now," he said. "I have big returns, as you know, and I have everything all approved and very beautiful and we'll be working that over in the next period of time."

A month later, though, the story changed.

Trump said he was under audit and couldn't release his returns while that was happening.

In March, Anderson Cooper asked Trump if he won't release his actual returns, would he at least the letter from the IRS proving he was under audit.

Trump agreed but then a few days later would only release from his lawyers saying he had been under "continuous" audit for years.

Earlier this month, he seemed to discount any possibility of releasing them before the election, adding: "You don't learn very much from tax returns.

"There's nothing to learn from them."