Donald Trump has made history. As you've probably heard, he's the first president – indeed, the first major party nominee – to refuse to offer an accounting of his finances in over four decades. The issue has dogged him in the past, and looks like it won't be going away: This week, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said the president's hopes for comprehensive tax reform will be "much harder" if he refuses to release them. "So for his own good, he ought to make them public," he said. "And the big mystery is why he hasn't." And while theories abound as to what that mystery entails, the roots of the controversy lie in Disney World.

The custom of candidates releasing their federal tax returns, in whole or in part, dates back to one of the lowest points of the Watergate scandal. In November 1973, President Richard Nixon was on the ropes. The Watergate investigation had battered him for more than a half year, but the previous month had been particularly brutal. On October 10, Vice President Spiro Agnew – under investigation for political corruption that occurred when he was the "law-and-order" governor of Maryland – resigned in disgrace, pleading guilty to federal tax evasion in exchange for having larger charges dismissed. Just 10 days later, the nation was stunned by the "Saturday Night Massacre," when Nixon's efforts to fire the special prosecutor investigating his administration shockingly prompted resignations of his attorney general and deputy attorney general. Public support for impeachment, which had sat in the 20s for most of the summer, skyrocketed. A plurality of Americans soon favored it.

Desperate for damage control, the Nixon White House launched what it called, with a straight face, "Operation Candor." On November 17, 1973, the president sought to reestablish his credibility in the fantasy-friendly confines of Disney World. In a televised Q&A session with 400 newspaper editors, he hoped to convince the nation of his honesty and integrity. He only made things worse.

Nixon grew increasingly angry and agitated at the podium when the Orlando press conference turned to questions about his finances. Reporters had been hounding him for weeks, asking how he could afford two separate private homes on his relatively meager presidential salary and whether he'd benefitted personally from administration dealings. There had even been rumors that the President of the United States was being bankrolled in some way by the eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes.

Grabbing the podium with both hands and bobbing nervously on his feet, Nixon tried to dispel the rumors and shore up his credibility:

Let me just say this, and I want to say this to the television audience: I made my mistakes, but in all of my years of public life, I have never profited, never profited from public service—I have earned every cent. And in all of my years of public life, I have never obstructed justice. And I think, too, that I could say that in my years of public life, that I welcome this kind of examination, because people have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I am not a crook. I have earned everything I have got.



At that, the president stepped back from the podium, crossed his arms defensively and gave a curt nod, signaling that his word would be good enough. It wasn't. To prove that he wasn't a crook – or at least not the particular kind of crook detailed in those allegations – Nixon reluctantly released his tax returns a week later.

The paperwork dispelled most of the larger suspicions about him, but also showed that Nixon had taken advantage of every possible deduction he could have used. (In 1970, for instance, he and his wife paid only $792.81 in taxes on more than $200,000 in income.) More damning, the president had claimed a deduction he shouldn't have used, backdating the donation of his vice presidential papers. As a result, Nixon owed a considerable sum in back taxes. He paid up and the press moved on to the other "White House horrors." Nine months later, Nixon was gone.

In the wake of Watergate, the United States embraced a wide array of reforms to make sure that nothing like that would rock the nation again. As part of this trend, it became standard practice for presidential candidates to release details of their tax returns. For a while, anyway.

During the 1976 campaign, President Gerald Ford had White House aides put together a summary of his payments over the previous ten years. His rival Jimmy Carter went even further, though, and released copies of his actual federal tax returns. Campaigning on a promise to restore honesty and integrity to the presidency, the Democrat believed full disclosure of his finances would draw a contrast with the cagier Republicans.

Sure enough, Carter's tax returns revealed only modest assets. He held only a little stock, roughly a thousand dollars in southern firms like Coca-Cola. His biggest holding was the family peanut farm and warehouse in Plains, Georgia. Conflicts of interest between the presidency and the peanut business seemed unlikely, but Carter nevertheless placed both properties in a blind trust upon taking office. His actions set the norm for nominees.

Ronald Reagan found himself bound by the new custom. Reagan had long resisted sharing his tax returns, citing a need for privacy. But once he secured the Republican presidential nomination in August 1980, he decided he no longer had a choice. "He kind of forfeits his right to privacy," Reagan's communications director Lyn Nofziger told reporters. "We just thought we'd get it out and get it behind us."

The only real revelation from the single year of returns was that Reagan was, as a Wall Street Journal reporter put it, "a wealthy man who pinches pennies." Worth roughly $4 million, Reagan still claimed deductions as small as $15 for depreciation on a fan at his California ranch. He had precise claims, down to the dollar, on sales taxes and detailed purchases of horseshoes, feed and recycled fence poles for his ranch. The details of the tax returns painted Reagan as a tightwad, helping augment his public image as a crusader who would cut government spending. The returns even showed that neither he nor his wife supported diverting a single dollar from their taxes for public financing of presidential campaigns. "He is philosophically opposed to that," Nofziger stated with pride, casting his boss as an enemy of big government spending in every instance.

The details of the tax returns painted Reagan as a tightwad, helping augment his public image as a crusader who would cut government spending.

With bipartisan backing for the custom, Reagan's successors released their returns as well. George H.W. Bush had placed all his assets in a blind trust when he assumed the vice presidency, so his returns were pretty dull. "The documents show no questionable tax shelters, no heavily leveraged investments and no unusual ventures," the New York Times reported with a yawn. "They contain no evidence that he benefited financially from his public offices."

Bill Clinton's tax returns painted a reassuringly boring picture, too. In the primaries, he'd run television spots advertising that he was the nation's lowest paid governor and hadn't taken a pay raise in over a decade. The joint returns he released reinforced the image of a man with a common touch, showing that the Clintons' income had actually dropped in recent years. Later, when rumors swirled about their involvement in the failed Whitewater land deal, the Clintons released additional returns that showed they had indeed taken a loss. While they didn't present a flattering picture of the president's business acumen, the old returns helped dispel the scandal.

In contrast, George W. Bush's tax returns, released in October 2000, demonstrated he had generated incredible income with his business deals. The 1998 return, for instance, showed how Bush's initial $600,000 investment in the Texas Rangers baseball team led to a $15 million payout when the team was sold off to new owners. Bush's income the following year was more modest. There was a $130,000 advance for a campaign book he co-wrote with aide Karen Hughes, but the entire advance, his press secretary noted, had been donated to the Boys and Girls Clubs.

Like his father, Bush had placed his remaining holdings in a blind trust as he entered the campaign. Voters could then rest assured there would be no conflicts of interest between his business past and his political future.

In March 2008, Barack Obama released his eight most recent tax returns. Much like Bush, his filings showed a spike in income just before he ran for the presidency, largely due to royalties from two best-selling books. That influx of cash led in turn to a rise in charitable giving, which his returns showed had been practically non-existent before his 2004 run for the Senate. Notably, the bulk of the Obamas' charitable giving had gone to the Trinity United Church of Christ, whose pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, had become a source of intense controversy on the campaign trail. Only days before the paperwork release, Obama had given his major address on Wright and race relations writ large.

Aside from the details on his charitable giving, Obama's early release of his tax returns helped distinguish him from his Democratic and Republican rivals alike. Hillary Clinton hurriedly released hers soon after, and John McCain released two years of his returns in April 2008. The Republican initially refused to release the separately-filed returns of his wife Cindy, a millionaire whose holdings included a beer distributorship. But when reporters began to focus on McCain's health issues, his campaign suddenly released her returns as well.

Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee, initially resisted the demands for disclosure. "I don't intend to release the tax returns," he declared to NBC's Chuck Todd in late 2011. But as questions mounted about his personal finances and his record working as a venture capitalist, Romney's resistance began to weaken. "If that's been the tradition," he acceded before the South Carolina primary, "I'm not opposed to doing that." As many noted at the time, that clearly was the tradition; moreover, his own father had helped start it, releasing a dozen years of tax returns during his failed 1968 presidential run.

Romney's own father had helped start the tradition, releasing a dozen years of tax returns during his failed 1968 presidential run.

Romney offered some information, but resisted releasing all his returns. "My view is I've paid all the taxes required by law," he announced defensively in August. But again, public pressure forced his hand. News reports revealed that he had bank accounts in foreign tax havens. Much more damning, a secretly-recorded video emerged of Romney telling supporters that 47 percent of Americans didn't pay income taxes but felt entitled to government services.

Facing a backlash, Romney struck an awkward compromise, releasing his 2010 and 2011 returns but only a summary for the previous 20 years. There proved to be little alarming in his returns, but the months of discussion about their release only contributed to the public impression that he had something to hide. Obama, by comparison, had released all his returns, stretching back to 2000, and set an image of transparency.

When the 2016 campaign began, Romney urged the new round of Republican contenders not to repeat his mistakes. They should release their returns early, before the primaries, and thereby save themselves the intense scrutiny later on. All of the major contenders eventually followed his advice, except one: Donald Trump.

Trump was, of course, well aware of the standard and initially promised he'd meet it. "If I did decide to run for office, I'll produce my tax returns, absolutely, and I would love to do that," he declared in May 2014. But as the election drew near, Trump began to hedge. "I would certainly show my tax returns," he said in February 2015, "if it was necessary." A year later, in February 2016, Trump hedged further: "We'll get them out at some point. Probably."

As he backpedaled, Trump's taxes predictably became a campaign issue. Republican leaders pressed their party's presumptive candidate to come clean. "It is disqualifying for a modern-day presidential nominee to refuse to release tax returns to the voters," Romney noted in May 2016. "There is only one logical explanation for Mr. Trump's refusal to release his returns: there is a bombshell in them. Given Mr. Trump's equanimity with other flaws in his history, we can only assume it's a bombshell of unusual size."

Despite the growing pressure, Trump dug in his heels. In the summer, he began to argue that some of his returns were under audit and therefore he couldn't release any of them. As the IRS noted publicly, there was nothing in the law preventing a return under audit from being released. Indeed, the first returns that Nixon released in 1973 were under audit at the time.

More troubling, the campaign never offered proof that any of the returns were under audit. In a September interview, CNN's Alisyn Camerota pressed the issue with campaign manager Kellyanne Conway: "Will Donald Trump release anything from the IRS proving that he's under audit?" Conway deflected the question, asserting that the inquiry was insulting. "I'm sorry, are you calling him a liar?" she asked angrily. "Seriously, we're running against a Clinton, and we're going to challenge someone's veracity?" (Clinton, by this point, had made available 38 years of her and her husband's tax returns, stretching back to 1977.)

As the IRS noted publicly, there was nothing in the law preventing a return under audit from being released. Indeed, the first returns that Nixon released in 1973 were under audit at the time.

The CNN anchor persisted, circling back to the tax returns when the interview turned to Trump's repeated and repeatedly unproven claims that he had given millions to charity. "Part of why people are calling on him to release his taxes is so we do know how much he himself has given to charity," she explained. "Will you or the campaign release exactly what that number is?" "I doubt it," Conway said defensively. "This is like badgering. I don't see it as journalism, I see it as badgering."

The Trump campaign insisted that only the media cared about his tax returns, but polling showed otherwise. A month before Conway's dismissive stance on CNN, a Quinnipiac poll showed that 74 percent of all Americans – and even 62 percent of Republicans – wanted to see Trump's tax returns before the election. Likewise, a Fox News poll in September showed that 60 percent of Americans suspected that Trump was hiding something serious in his returns.

After Trump won, he believed his taxes had been buried for good. When the topic came up again at a January 2017 press conference, the president-elect grew dismissive. "The only one that cares about my tax returns are the reporters, okay? They're the only ones," he insisted; the public wasn't interested at all.

But polls still suggested otherwise. A Pew Research Center survey, released just before that press conference, showed that nearly two-thirds of Americans thought the incoming president had an obligation to reveal his tax returns to voters. In his months in office, the issue has not gone away. Indeed, it only seems to be gaining new attention, for several reasons.

First, there remain basic questions about the size and scope of Trump's wealth. He's pointed to his successes as a sign of his leadership skills, but refused to provide the details that give credence to such claims. Reagan, the Bushes, McCain and Romney all let voters have a peek at their personal fortunes, but Trump – who has made much bigger claims than any of his predecessors about his wealth and its meaning – has not.

Likewise, Trump has insisted he's given a considerable amount to charity, but done nothing much to substantiate those claims like all his predecessors did. Obama's returns exposed that, early in his career, he'd given less than 1% of his income to charity; George H.W. Bush's showed that in 1991 he donated 61% of his income. We have no idea where President Trump sits on this spectrum, no clue as to what causes he actually supports with his own money.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans thought the incoming president had an obligation to reveal his tax returns to voters. In his months in office, the issue has not gone away.

Second, concerns raised on the campaign trail about Trump's ongoing relationship to his business holdings have only deepened. While past presidents like Carter and the Bushes placed their assets in blind trusts after their elections to prevent any semblance of conflict of interest, Trump has refused to do so. Where a legitimate blind trust would have seen Trump liquefy his assets and place them in the hands of a disinterested and detached third party, the president kept his branded properties and kept them in the hands of his children, with whom he's in regular contact.

Third, because the Republican congressional agenda includes a program for huge tax cuts, voters are naturally curious about how such changes might benefit Trump and his children. Has the president availed himself of any tax loopholes in the past? How might he personally benefit from new policies slanted to the wealthy? Will the tax policies he's going to push wind up lining his own pockets, or lightening them?

Last and certainly not least, the probe of the relationship between Russia and the Trump campaign has also heightened interest in his tax returns. As a businessman and candidate for office, Trump repeatedly bragged about his financial ties to Russia; now, he insists he has none. His taxes would allow the American public to see if his family has any current investments in Russia, and, more important, if the Russians have any current investments in him.

Despite all these concerns, the White House insists that "people don't care." But growing public pressure suggests otherwise. Plans are now underway for a massive Tax March to be held, fittingly enough, on Tax Day, Saturday, April 15. Modeled on the Women's March after Trump's inauguration, the protests will feature a march in Washington, D.C., with satellite protests now planned in over 120 cities across the country, ranging from Manhattan to Mar-a-Lago.

Fittingly, there even will be a Tax March in Orlando, not far from the Disney World hotel where Richard Nixon set this all in motion.