Richard Nixon famously declared that “I am not a crook,” despite subsequent events proving the irony in his statement. People who were not alive when Nixon first said it frequently reference the phrase, but the story behind those words carries a more significant legacy than a simple colloquialism: In his efforts to exonerate himself and uphold his record, Richard Nixon started the practice of presidents and presidential candidates releasing their tax returns. This tradition has continued ever since — at least it had, until the 2016 election.
During the 2016 campaign, then-candidate Donald Trump frequently broke from the paradigm of a leading presidential candidate. He refused to release his tax returns, and, in doing so, broke with the precedent set by every president in recent history. This refusal fits in with his unconventional presidency. Democrats, Republicans, and independents alike have criticized this decision, and they have carried the issue into the 2020 campaign landscape.
But do voters actually care about presidential candidates’ tax returns? Generally, voters in the general election do not care much about the contents of those tax returns; it is the act itself of releasing tax returns that gives voters a mundane connection to leaders who are otherwise viewed as larger-than-life, and Trump is the exception that proves the rule. On the other hand, primary voters, especially Democrats looking at the crowded 2020 primary field, use tax returns as one way among many to distinguish between candidates.
Presidential Precedent
Presidential candidates providing their tax returns is largely a matter of precedent. The Nixon administration began a new trend of distrust in government that changed voters’ expectations of their leaders, and Nixon tried to combat this shift by releasing his own tax returns. Since Nixon, various interest groups and oppositional researchers have combed through most major candidates’ released returns, always looking for something to damage their election prospects.
Returns have never seemed to decide an election, but there have been instances wherein they have influenced them. Bill Clinton, for example, struggled with the Whitewater controversy. George Bush, on the other hand, received a bit of positive media attention for the notable contributions to charity that were reflected in his returns.
Tax returns stood in the background of many recent elections, but 2016 was the first time they became a leading issue. When Trump declined to release his returns, Democrats at every level of politics got the green light to speculate and assume the worst about his finances. “[Trump] is not going to release his tax returns between now and the time you start voting, and that sort of suggests there must be something really terrible in those tax returns,” Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said during a campaign rally. A report from the New York Times even suggested that then-candidate Trump might have avoided paying his taxes altogether for several years.
Little to Gain, Much to Lose
One would assume that a commonplace political practice like this would have a clear purpose. Nearly half of the 2020 Democratic candidates have released their tax returns, and most major candidates in recent history have released theirs, so it would appear that a significant benefit exists.
As it turns out, that purported benefit really does not exist beyond good optics. First, published tax returns show voters that their leaders do pay the taxes they levy. Second, they offer a gesture of transparency and openness toward the public. While tax returns do provide a true mechanism of transparency, it is largely the optics of integrity that come into play. Giving voters a feeling of connection to and openness from their elected officials is arguably the larger purpose of releasing returns.
However, releasing returns can sometimes backfire; if there are any questions or inconsistencies, someone will certainly find them. Steve Rosenthal of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center explained to the HPR that candidates’ opponents will look for a disparity in the “effective tax rate,” between what the candidate should have paid in taxes and the amount they did pay off the bat.
“Other things you can find on a tax return would be how generous the candidate might be for charities, how aggressive the candidate might be with deductions that relate to how they brought their effective tax rate down, or what type of financial interests they have,” he continued. Average voters will not look through a candidate’s tax returns themselves; they will form their opinions based on details reported by the media, with journalists largely determining whether tax returns will enter the spotlight and become an area of interest for voters.
More surprising, however, is the extent to which general election voters simply seem not to care. As SUNY Plattsburgh political science professor Harvey Schantz, an expert in presidential elections, told the HPR, “Democrats tend to see good in Democratic candidates, and also bad in Republican presidents and Republican candidates. So the question of not issuing your taxes, or Trump not releasing his taxes, seems to reiterate prior political dispositions.” Essentially, undecided voters are not likely to make a decision based on a candidate’s tax record, and decided voters are very good at making excuses for candidates they already like. Issues like tax returns affect the election’s narrative, not its outcome.
A Taxing 2020 Campaign
The story changes when candidates are competing within their own party and not against the other party. Since Democratic primary voters must decide among a crowded field of primary candidates, they are looking for any shred of information that can separate one candidate from the others. There are no party lines in a primary to make the choice simple; it is hard to stand out in a positive way, but easy to stick out with an obvious flaw. A questionable tax return could sound the death knell for some of the weaker candidates, especially in today’s quick-to-judge social media culture.
Even if there is no glaring problem, candidates may find that the media criticizes them for their returns anyway. For example, both left-wing and right-wing media outlets hit Sen. Bernie Sanders for preaching socialist rhetoric around economic equality even as his returns placed him in the top 1 percent of earners nationwide. Beto O’Rourke received criticism for not giving enough to charity. From “too rich” to “too stingy,” candidates’ tax returns open them up to a field day of attacks from the media and their opponents. In a world where attack ads rule the political landscape, it is predictable that opponents have seized tax returns as a free, fruitful source of oppositional research.
It seems that the risk of losing votes strongly outweighs the chance of gaining them, so why do so many candidates release their returns anyway? Already, leading Democratic presidential candidates like Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, and Sanders have all released at least one year’s worth of tax returns. Perhaps these candidates really do value transparency and a higher standard for elected officials. However, another significant impetus behind releasing returns is avoiding the consequences of not releasing them among Democratic voters. Additionally, releasing their returns so early and with such enthusiasm allows the candidates to distinguish themselves even further from Trump, as well as to distinguish themselves from each other in the crowded Democratic primary.
From the War Room to the Courtroom
Trump, of course, still refuses to release his tax returns, and Democrats have pounced on that refusal. As a consequence, a new hybrid legal-political dispute has arisen as Congress looks for avenues to compel the president to release his returns. Former chief of staff of the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation and University of Virginia tax law professor George Yin sees two viable pathways for Congress to obtain the President’s returns: either through subpoena or by invoking a 1924 statute, which he feels grants this authority to the Ways and Means Committee. Yin pointed out, however, that this is “uncharted territory.” The precedent does not exist in this case, so there is no way to know how a court would rule.
The New York state legislature, meanwhile, has recently attempted to give itself the power to release the president’s state tax returns to the three taxation committees in Congress, a move which would shift power over the returns away from the embattled White House and toward a Democrat-controlled state government. Trump has responded by filing a lawsuit against New York’s attorney general and against the House Ways and Means Committee, arguing that neither entity has the right to his tax returns.
New York Assemblyman Mark Walczyk, a Republican who voted against the bill, said in an interview with the HPR that this legislation is directly targeting the President, and that doing so falls outside of the state legislature’s role. He commented, “Nothing good comes from targeted policy decisions made while emotions are running high.”
Walczyk told the HPR that partisanship has worked its way into the legal arguments over compelling the president’s returns, where it simply does not belong. The lines are blurring between politics, policy, and law — even more so than usual.
Smoking Gun or Dangerous Recoil?
Ironically, the politicization of the legal battle over Trump’s tax returns — the part that we would have hoped to be the least political — might have the biggest effect on elections of all. Tax returns are not likely to persuade voters enough to change the course of an election. However, firing up the Trump base through persistent attacks might be enough to turn out his voters in the very swarms that the Democrats are trying to avoid.
One might presume that even if he is free from legal jeopardy, Trump’s lack of released returns would pose a serious threat to his credibility and optics. Actually, the effect appears to go in the opposite direction: Trump’s public persona allows him to withhold his tax returns nearly cost-free. The DNC might care, the media might care, and his outspoken critics might care, but Trump voters do not seem to care much at all.
His outsider status and complete divergence from the status quo are what make Trump’s brand. Withholding his tax returns is actually on message, and fundamental Trump supporters like the fact that he is different from the classic model of a politician. That Trump is breaking precedent from every other candidate is, if anything, a positive point for them.
The Future of Presidential Tax Returns
After all this controversy surrounding Trump’s unprecedented decision to withhold his tax returns, new proposals requiring candidates to release their tax returns have emerged. Rosenthal agrees with those proposals. “I think it’s relevant to how we look at our officials and their approach to civic duty,” he said.
However, Walczyk pointed out that such a requirement might discourage viable candidates from running for public office. “A lot of well qualified people have been thinking and saying, ‘I don’t want to put my family through this,’” Yin pointed out in a similar vein. We certainly hold our leaders to a higher standard, but does that mean that they should be expected to give up a great deal of their privacy? And if so, are tax returns a part of the privacy that candidates are expected to give up when they run for office? The public seems to think that they are, even though it remains unlikely to actually change its voting behavior based on the returns.
For better or for worse, candidates will generally find it best to release their tax returns to the public. Withholding returns in general is not a partisan issue, and future Republican candidates are unlikely to receive the same exemption from their voters. Candidates are not likely to gain points in the polls by releasing their returns, but doing so does save them from sticking out like a sore thumb. For most “conventional” candidates, failing to release tax returns will make an already long and painful campaign even longer and more painful.
The Trump campaign does not experience these same barriers because it is not a conventional campaign. For everyone else, releasing returns is an inevitable and compulsory step along the road to victory. For Trump, the controversy has created yet another way to redefine the rules for a successful presidential campaign.
Tax returns will probably remain a prominent topic of debate throughout the 2020 election, regardless of whether or not — and by whom — the president’s returns are released. Democrats will continue to use tax returns as an internal wedge issue, but the decisions candidates make about their tax returns are unlikely to decide the general election. Tax returns will affect the media coverage of the 2020 campaign, and they will affect the Democratic primary, but they will not significantly affect the election’s outcome on November 3.
Image Credit: flickr/Fibonacci Blue