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Trump Asks For More Time To File His Taxes

President Trump has filed for an extension on his taxes. Trump has bucked the tradition of presidents and major presidential candidates releasing their tax returns to the public.
Saul Loeb
/
AFP/Getty Images
President Trump has filed for an extension on his taxes. Trump has bucked the tradition of presidents and major presidential candidates releasing their tax returns to the public.

President Trump will not meet the federal deadline to file his 2017 tax return in April, the White House said.

"The president filed an extension for his 2017 tax return, as do many Americans with complex returns," White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said in a statement.

Sanders said Trump will file his returns by Oct. 15, the deadline set by the IRS for taxpayers who ask for extensions.

Trump has bucked decades of tradition by not releasing his tax returns to the public.

During the campaign he argued that he could not release his taxes because he was under audit, though tax experts told NPR that no law bars people from releasing their returns during an audit. After the election, Trump said Americans do not care about seeing his tax returns.

Details about some of his tax filings have leaked to news outlets.

The White House confirmed that Trump and his wife, Melania, earned about $150 million in 2005 and paid federal taxes of about $38 million, after copies of the president's 2005 returns were anonymously sent to a journalist.

Documents obtained by the New York Times in 2016 showed that Trump declared a $916 million loss on his 1995 tax returns.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Ayesha Rascoe is a White House correspondent for NPR. She is currently covering her third presidential administration. Rascoe's White House coverage has included a number of high profile foreign trips, including President Trump's 2019 summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Hanoi, Vietnam, and President Obama's final NATO summit in Warsaw, Poland in 2016. As a part of the White House team, she's also a regular on the NPR Politics Podcast.