For months, Donald Trump has refused to release his tax returns to the public, with the GOP frontrunner most recently blaming the delay on the fact that the IRS is in the process of auditing those returns.
On Wednesday evening, Trump’s campaign sought to reinforce that stance by releasing a letter from the real estate mogul and former reality television star’s lawyers, who confirm that Trump’s tax filings from 2009 onward are, indeed, still being audited by the Internal Revenue Service.
Trump’s lawyers—two tax partners from the firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius—state in a letter addressed to the presidential candidate that the IRS has finished examining Trump’s tax returns for the years 2002 through 2008 “without assessment or payment, on a net basis, of any deficiency.” Trump’s tax returns from 2009 onward, meanwhile, include items related to ongoing transactions and are still in the process of being audited, the letter states.
The lawyers, who note that they have served as tax counsel to Trump since 2005, go on to reiterate information contained in the Personal Finance Disclosure Trump submitted to the Federal Election Commission last year, including that The Trump Organization holds full or partial interests in roughly 500 separate entities. Those entities “engage in hundreds of transactions, deals, and new enterprises every year,” the letter reads.
While presidential candidates have no legal obligation to release their IRS filings, nearly all major contenders in recent decades have willingly submitted that information to the public.
Earlier this month, Fortune‘s Shawn Tully dug through the financial records Trump has made public and found that the billionaire had likely overstated his income significantly in his filing with the FEC. Meanwhile, also this month, a report surfaced showing that Trump apparently recently received a New York state property tax break that is only available to married couples who make $500,000 or less per year despite Trump pegging his 2014 income at $362 million.
