The release of former President Donald J. Trump’s private tax documents by the House Ways and Means Committee shows heavy losses from his own ventures as he continued to cash in on inherited assets.
House Democrats released six years of former President Donald J. Trump’s tax records on Friday, offering new insight into his business dealings that further undermined his long-cultivated image as a wildly successful businessman.
The release on Friday morning contained thousands of pages of tax documents, including individual returns for Mr. Trump and his wife, Melania, as well as business returns for several of the hundreds of companies that make up his sprawling business organization. It followed the release of reports from Democrats on the Ways and Means Committee that showed Mr. Trump had paid a total of $1.1 million in federal income taxes in the first three years of his presidency, but paid no tax in 2020 as his income dwindled and losses mounted.
The document disclosure drew rebukes and threats of retaliation from Mr. Trump and his Republican allies in Congress, who suggested that once their party takes over the House on Jan. 3, they may seek to disclose tax returns filed by Democratic politicians, Supreme Court justices and members of President Biden’s family, such as his son Hunter.
The documents appeared to show that Mr. Trump violated his campaign promise to donate his salary as president, at least in 2020, when he reported no charitable giving of any kind. They also suggested Mr. Trump’s tax bill may have gone up because of a change in his signature 2017 tax overhaul: a limitation on the deduction of state and local taxes paid.
In a statement on Friday, Mr. Trump denounced Democrats and said the decision to release the returns had been “weaponized.”
“The ‘Trump’ tax returns once again show how proudly successful I have been and how I have been able to use depreciation and various other tax deductions as an incentive for creating thousands of jobs and magnificent structures and enterprises,” he wrote.
But the returns, which cover the tax years 2015 through 2020, do not show much success for Mr. Trump in his recent business dealings. They show Mr. Trump often reported heavy losses from his own ventures, even as he continued to cash in on assets he inherited.
Mr. Trump’s history of inheriting wealth and then losing it was chronicled by The New York Times in 2020, when it obtained decades of Mr. Trump’s tax information, including much of which was disclosed on Friday.
In 2018, after a decade in which the former president declared no taxable income according to tax returns reviewed by The Times, Mr. Trump reported taxable income of more than $24 million. He paid nearly $1 million in federal taxes, nearly the entire total he paid as president.