Trump's Tax Dodge Is About Releasing His Returns: Albert R. Hunt

Donald Trump, who has called one opponent "Lyin' Ted" and another "Crooked Hillary," has gotten away with more falsehoods and fabrications than any politician in memory. He's at it again.

The subject is his tax returns. First he said he'd release them, as every Republican and Democratic presidential and vice presidential nominee has done since 1980. Then this week he told the Associated Press he probably wouldn't, at least not before an Internal Revenue Service audit was complete (which may or may not be before the November election). Then on Wednesday night, he told Fox News that he'd release them after all, but didn't say when.

Get serious, Donald.

An IRS audit wouldn't prevent him from releasing his returns; certainly he could release earlier years.

Until he does, people have a right to conclude that the real reason for his reticence is that he doesn't want voters to know what the documents might reveal. That he's not as rich as he says he is? That he's used legal loopholes to shrink his tax bill? That he's stingy when it comes to charity?

Trump seems to figure that he can get away with saying whatever he wants, truth be damned. He said he saw thousands of Muslims cheering in New Jersey after the 9/11 terrorist acts -- a scene no one else saw. He claims that he warned that the U.S. "better take out" Osama bin Laden before the World Trade Center attacks -- he never did. He charges that President Barack Obama "is thinking about signing an executive order where he wants to take your guns away" -- a fabrication.

Then there was his first big national splash: the absurd allegation that Obama, the country's first African-American president, wasn't born in the U.S. He also knows that Hillary Clinton, his presumptive opponent this fall, cannot effectively make the transparency case against him as long as she refuses to release the text of speeches she has delivered to Wall Street bankers and for which she was lavishly compensated. 

Others shouldn't be inhibited. Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee, got the ball rolling the other day when he charged it was "disqualifying for a modern-day presidential nominee to refuse to release tax returns, especially one who has not been subject to public scrutiny in either military or public service." Romney, who only released his own returns under pressure four years ago, speculated that there's a "bombshell" in Trump's tax submissions.

For his part, Trump claims "there's nothing to be learned" from his tax returns. My Bloomberg View colleague Tim O'Brien, who reviewed Trump's tax returns about a decade ago in the course of a legal dispute, begs to differ. The evidence is on his side.

There's a simple way for Trump to halt speculation about his motives: follow the 23 modern-day candidates, from Ronald Reagan through Sarah Palin to Barack Obama, and set those returns free.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.