Angry response from White House as Donald Trump tax returns leaked

Mark Chandler15 March 2017

The White House has responded angrily after Donald Trump's tax returns were leaked, showing the President earned £123million in 2005.

According to the documents, the billionaire paid £31 million in income taxes on the earnings.

They show the President paid a rate that was effectively just under 25 per cent thanks to a tax he has since sought to abolish.

The pages from Mr Trump's federal tax return show the then-real estate mogul also reported a business loss of 85 million in 2005, although the documents do not provide details.

The forms show Mr Trump paid an effective tax rate of 24.5 per cent, a figure well above the roughly 10 per cent the average American taxpayer hands over each year.

But it is below the 27.4 per cent that taxpayers earning 1 million dollars a year average, according to data from the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.

The form were obtained by journalist David Cay Johnston, who runs a website called DCReport.org, and reported on MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show.

Mr Johnston, who has long reported on tax issues, said he received the documents in the post, unsolicited.

The White House hit back even before the release of the documents on Tuesday night, saying that publishing the information was illegal.

"You know you are desperate for ratings when you are willing to violate the law to push a story about two pages of tax returns from over a decade ago," the White House said.

But Ms Maddow argued that MSNBC was exercising its First Amendment right to publish information in the public interest.

Mr Trump insists the American public is not interested in his returns and says little could be learned from them.

The issue was a major point of attack from his election rival Hillary Clinton, who suggested Mr Trump had something to hide.

The White House has not said whether the president plans to release his returns while he is in office.

More than a million people have signed a White House petition urging Mr Trump to release them.

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