TAXES/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/TRUMP TAXES: “President Trump’s promise to enact a sweeping overhaul of the tax code is in serious jeopardy nearly 100 days into his tenure, and his refusal to release his own tax returns is emerging as a central hurdle to another faltering campaign promise.
As procrastinators rushed to file their tax returns by Tuesday [4-18-17], the White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, emphasized again on Monday that Mr. Trump had no intention of making his public. Democrats have seized on that decision, uniting around a pledge not to cooperate on any rewriting of the tax code unless they know specifically how that revision would benefit the billionaire president and his family.
And a growing roster of more than a dozen Republican lawmakers now say Mr. Trump should release them.
‘If he doesn’t release his returns, it is going to make it much more difficult to get tax reform done,’ said Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, pointing out that the president has significant conflicts of interest on issues such as taxation of the real estate industry and elimination of the estate tax. ‘It’s in his own self-interest.'”
-Alan Rappeport, “Trump’s Unreleased Taxes Threaten Yet Another Campaign Promise,” The New York Times online, April 17, 2017