This article is published in partnership with Money.com. The original version can be found here.
By Martha C. White
Senate Democrats think they have a solution to Donald Trump’s reluctance to release his tax returns: Make it a law.
Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) proposed a bill on Wednesday that would require presidential candidates to release at least three years of tax returns no later than 15 days after their party elects them as nominee.
Wyden took to Twitter to plug his proposal, saying, “If you’re a nominee to be President, Americans have said ever since Watergate that you don’t get to hide your tax returns,” which he accompanied with the hashtag #ReleaseTheReturns.
If a nominee didn’t comply, the law would give the Federal Election Commission the authority to get a candidate’s tax filings from the Treasury Department in order to make them public, according to the New York Times.
Of course, with the GOP in control of the Senate, Wyden has a slim chance of turning this idea into actual legislation, but it draws more attention to the presumptive Republican nominee’s lack of public tax returns. (Front-runner Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton as well as Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders have released their returns.)
Trump has said IRS audits have prevented the release of his returns, but he also told George Stephanopoulos in a “Good Morning America” interview earlier this month, “It’s none of your business,” and, “I fight very hard to pay as little tax as possible.”
