The House has voted 222-201 in favor of mandating the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to audit all sitting U.S. Presidents. The vote was largely symbolic, as the Senate is unlikely to pass the bill.
IRS policy instructs the service to audit all sitting Presidents, but this has not been codified into law.
The bill passed following The Ways and Means Committee‘s release of Donald Trump‘s tax returns. The committee’s findings showed the IRS didn’t audit the President in 2017 or 2018. The IRS audited once during the President’s four-year term, in 2019, after the committee’s chair Richard Neal (D-Massachusetts) inquired about it.
Five Republicans voted with the Democratic Caucus in favor of the bill. They are Reps. Liz Cheney (Wyoming), Adam Kinzinger (Illinois), Fred Upton (Michigan), John Katko (New York) and Tom Rice (South Carolina).
None of the five Republicans will be present in the next Congress, as they either lost reelection bids or stepped down from their office.
Upton told The Hill he was motivated to vote for the bill after Trump backed down on releasing his own tax returns.
“I remember his statement in 2016 when he said — I’m paraphrasing — when he said that if he were the nominee, he was gonna release his taxes,” he said. “So it’s been six years. And I understand that the IRS probably dropped the ball, from what I read this morning, but he said he’d do it. So, the jig’s up.”
The Ways and Means Committee released Trump’s tax returns on Friday.
