Five House Republicans joined their Democratic colleagues to pass a bill to reform the process of auditing a president’s taxes.
The Presidential Tax Filings and Audit Transparency Act passed in a 222-201 vote with five Republicans siding with Democrats, according to the Hill.
They are: Reps. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.), Fred Upton (Mich.), Liz Cheney (Wyo.), John Katko (N.Y.) and Tom Rice (S.C.).
None of the five Republicans who voted for the bill will be returning to Congress.
“What drove me was, I remember his statement in 2016 when he said, I’m paraphrasing, when he said that if he were the nominee he was gonna release his taxes. So its been six years. And I understand that the IRS probably dropped the ball, from what I read this morning, but he said he’d do it. So, the jigs up,” Rep. Upton told The Hill.
The bill calls for codifying the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) current mandate that presidents are audited every year they serve in the White House.
This comes after the House Ways and Means Committee found that the IRS did not audit Donald Trump’s tax returns for two years while he was in the White House and only started doing so after the committee’s chairman Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.) asked for the returns.
