Getting and dealing with the president’s tax returns may be a harder and slower process than Democrats realize. | Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo Tax Why Democrats can get Trump’s tax returns now But the maneuver doesn’t come without some political risks for Democrats.

With Democrats running the House, one of the biggest headaches for President Donald Trump could be the release of his tax returns, which he has long refused to make public.

Democrats on Wednesday said they’d use special powers enjoyed by the leaders of congressional tax committees to get the documents. Pressed about it at a news conference, Trump avoided the question by saying he wouldn’t release his taxes while he’s under audit. But under the law, he may not have a choice about whether Democrats obtain them.


"There’s ample justification” for the Ways and Means Committee to go after Trump’s personal and business tax returns, Rep. Lloyd Doggett, the panel's No. 4 Democrat, said Wednesday. “We need to act on this promptly.”

But the maneuver doesn’t come without some political risks for Democrats — and actually getting and dealing with the president’s returns may be a harder and slower process than they realize.

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Here are some answers about what they can do:

How can House Democrats get Trump’s tax returns even if he refuses to release them?

A 1924 law allows the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee to examine anyone’s tax returns in private, without their permission, and the likely incoming chairman, Massachusetts Democrat Richard Neal, has said he’d go after Trump’s IRS filings. The law allows him to share the material in private with other lawmakers on the panel and their staff.

Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer, has said he’d urge Trump to fight the request. But it’s unclear how that would play out if it went to court. The law stipulates the Treasury secretary “shall” turn over “any return or return information” requested by the heads of Congress’ tax committees, or its nonpartisan tax advisory office, the Joint Committee on Taxation. “Secretary Mnuchin will review any request with the Treasury general counsel for legality,” an agency spokesperson said Wednesday.

Can lawmakers make the information public once they have it?

Lawmakers can vote to make the information public. That would be highly unusual, though it wouldn’t be unprecedented. A few years ago, Republicans voted to make private tax information about nonprofit groups public, though not individual taxpayers’ returns, as part of an investigation into the IRS. Before that, Congress made public President Richard Nixon’s tax information after questions about whether he had underpaid his taxes.

How quickly might we see something?

Democrats are prepared for the White House to order Treasury to refuse to release Trump’s returns, forcing lawmakers to go to court to spring the returns. That could potentially take years, and some predict the administration will happily tie up the issue in court if only to delay the disclosure.

Of course, Democrats could always retaliate by cutting Treasury’s budget or by attaching riders into its annual appropriations — such as one preventing Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin from using public money to travel.

Are there risks for Democrats?

It’s a felony to improperly disclose tax information, punishable up to five years in prison — one reason why tax returns rarely leak. Some warn Democrats will have to be careful handling Trump’s returns. They would likely examine them in private for some time, while they try to understand Trump’s finances, before releasing anything to the public. During that time, if Democrats answer a reporters’ question, for example, in a way that reflects something they’ve learned from his return, they could find themselves in legal jeopardy.

Neal should not even bring Trump’s returns to the Hill, and should instead visit them at the IRS in order to avoid leaks, said Janice Mays, a former longtime Democratic tax aide.

“I would recommend that he doesn’t even take physical custody of them but leaves them at the IRS,” said Mays, who was the panel’s chief counsel and is now managing director of tax policy services at PwC. “If anything does get leaked, you’ll be accused of being the leaker if you’ve got it, so I’d say go down and visit it — don’t bring it to you.”

Neal may even have trouble discussing the issue even in general, once he’s seen the returns, she said. “Anything he says — people will read it into that he’s seen the return and knows something,” said Mays. “He’s going to have to go quiet, as is anybody who has access to them.”

Once the Democrats have the returns, what could they do with them?

The first task for the committee would be understanding what the returns show. Trump’s filings will surely be hugely complicated, and even the tax committees may not have the expertise to fully decipher them. They may need to hire outside investigators or perhaps tap the JCT to help them understand what they’re looking at.

Could there be financial consequences for Trump?

It depends what Democrats find. It didn’t go well for Nixon when the JCT audited his returns at lawmakers’ request in 1974. It took JCT four months to produce a report on Nixon’s taxes that ran almost 1,000 pages — and determined that he owed almost $500,000, which amounted to half his net worth.