Trump claims New York tax law no longer applies to him because he’s not president

US Supreme Court had denied Trump’s move to keep the tax returns private

File image: Former US president Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, Florida

(Reuters)

Donald Trump, in another attempt to block his tax returns, has now said that the New York tax law no longer applies to him because he is no more the US president.

The tax law of New York, which is called the Trust Act, enables the state to share the president’s tax details with the Congressional committee.

In 2019, Mr Trump had sued the House Ways and Means Committee to stop it from requesting this information, officials of the New York state administration, and New York’s attorney general to block them from giving his tax information to the US Congress.

According to a report by the Bloomberg News, Mr Trump’s lawyers have now written in a report to the US District Judge Carl J Nichols in Washington, saying that “While the Trust Act is not the clearest statute, the best reading is that it does not apply to former presidents.”

The judge had dismissed the case against the New York official citing jurisdiction issues but allowed the case against the Committee to go on.

On Monday, the former president’s lawyers said in a court filing: “The committee is still pursuing plaintiff’s financial information, the committee won’t concede that the Trust Act is limited to current presidents, the committee won’t promise not to invoke the Trust Act against plaintiff, and the committee won’t agree to give plaintiff advance notice before it invokes the Trust Act.”

“The chairman and the committee have taken no action at all with regard to the New York state statute or plaintiff Donald J Trump’s New York state tax returns, nor threatened to take any such action,” said the lawyers of the committee, dismissing the contentions.

Throughout his presidency, Mr Trump’s tax returns have been a topic of political controversy with him refusing to reveal his tax returns. His legal team fought a long battle to not reveal his tax returns but in February 2021 they were given to the New York prosecutors after the US Supreme Court refused to keep them private.

News reports had revealed that the New York prosecutors had received documents from January 2011 to August 2019 including tax filings, financial statements, and contracts relating to the preparation of the tax returns.