It's 20.

Do I have a problem?

Donald trump is fighting again to keep from turning over his tax returns.

In early november, he asked the Supreme Court and was granted a temporary pause and giving them to the democratic controlled house ways and means committee.

Now the fight for his returns has been a long, long saga back in 2014 trump said this of his returns.

If I decide to run for office I'll produce my tax returns.

Absolutely.

But he broke with recent trip for presidents and presidential candidates by refusing to release any of his past tax returns insisting that he was under audit and therefore could not release them.

He can release them.

Meanwhile he's under audit.

I don't mind releasing, I'm under a routine audit and it'll be released and as soon as the audit's finished it'll be released.

He has also repeatedly insisted that tax returns provide little financial information which is simply not true.

Trump's repeated attempts to keep his tax returns private over the years begs a very simple question why.

And there are several potential reasons that jump to mind reason.

One trump may not be as rich as he says he is.

Not long after trump launched his presidential campaign in 2015, he said he was worth upwards of $10 billion.

Forbes estimated his net worth was less than half that that year.

It's uniquely possible that a release of his tax returns would take the air out of the balloon that trump has been blowing up for much of his adult life.

Reason too.

He may not pay or hasn't paid his fair share of taxes despite his claims that he pays a lot.

So we know thanks to reporting from the new york times that trump paid zero federal taxes in 11 of the 18 years of returns that the publication was able to obtain.

And even in 2017, his first year as president trump paid just $750 in federal taxes.

A paltry sum for someone as rich as he is.

Reason three the $73 million refund.

We learned from The Times reporting that trump applied for a $72.9 million tax refund in 2010 claiming large losses that were widely attributed at the time to the decline of his atlantic city casinos.

The I.

R.

S.

Started its audit of the refund in 2011 which was still ongoing as of 2020.

It's uniquely possible that trump simply doesn't want to have that refund issue brought back up for fear he might be on the hook for that amount reason number four trump may have loans with foreign countries or individuals.

We know via congressional testimony from former trump confidant Michael Cohen that the former president was deeply involved in the potential construction of trump tower Moscow and that Cohen lied about trump's involvement and how long it had stretched to protect the president Donald trump.

JR reportedly said at a 2008 real estate conference.

This quote in terms of high end product influx into the US.

Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross section of a lot of our assets, say in Dubai and certainly with our project in soho and anywhere in new york, we see a lot of money pouring in from Russia and reason number five, he might not donate much or anything to charity trump.

Long used his own charitable organization to feather his own nest and collect political chits rather than for any philanthropic purpose trump.

Shut that charity down in 2018.

It's not at all clear how generous, if at all trump has been to other charities over the past few decades, while there is no requirement for wealthy individuals to make large charitable contributions, many do.

And so it would be decidedly bad look for trump if it looked like his repeated claims of Largesse donated to charity wound up being false.

Whatever the reason or reasons, it's been clear for the last seven years that trump is absolutely dead set on keeping his tax returns private, which makes me wonder what he's hiding still.