As ethics counsel to the current president and his predecessor, we scrutinized their tax returns before they were released every year. We also worked with our colleagues to review many tax returns of presidential nominees for cabinet and other positions. Based on the few pages of Donald J. Trump’s 1995 tax returns that have become public, we have come to the conclusion that no one in his position would have been nominated, much less confirmed by the Senate, during either of the administrations we served. The same is true of any modern administration of a president from either party.

If a presidential candidate cannot meet that standard, then we question his qualifications for the highest office in the land.

In both the Bush and Obama administrations, a bad attitude about paying taxes was a deal killer. Both of us saw instances of nominations that were doomed by the arguably legal but unsavory use of tax loopholes, as well as by the failure to pay Social Security taxes, the taking of excessive deductions for home offices or the sidestepping of sales taxes on out-of-state purchases. Explaining to the Senate and to the American people how a billionaire could have a $916 million “loss carry-forward” that potentially allowed him to not pay taxes for over a decade, perhaps for as long as 18 years, would have been far too difficult for the White House when many hard-working Americans turn a third or more of their earnings over to the government.

Any nominee who had told either of us that he had a “fiduciary responsibility” as a businessman or to his family to pay as little tax as possible, as Mr. Trump put it, would have been told to stop wasting the president’s time. People who believe they have a legal duty to put self-interest before the public interest don’t belong in public service. Besides, these are personal tax returns we are talking about. There is no such thing as a “fiduciary duty” as a businessman to oneself. That, as we’ve said before, is called greed.