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Is the IRS obligated to audit the president? Agency procedures say yes, and both former President Barack Obama and President Joe Biden say the department audited their tax returns regularly. Not so for former President Donald Trump. During his first two years in office, the IRS failed to audit him. Here to tell us what this could mean - we're joined by Nina Olson. She served as the IRS' national taxpayer advocate from 2001 to 2019. So, Nina, what would your concerns be about this discrepancy between how presidents were audited?
NINA OLSON: Well, you know, the mandatory audit program, which is just an administrative rule, so it's not congressional, it's not part of the law, but it is mandatory and it's in the IRS procedures that are instructions to its staff. And it - mandatory means mandatory. So the concern there is that it took until April 3, 2019, to actually begin to audit one of the returns that had been filed preceding the president's ascension to office. And it wasn't until September 2019 that an actual mandatory audit was started, and that was the only mandatory audit that occurred during the years of his presidency.
And that just means, why was it that the IRS waited until 2019 to commence a mandatory audit? And why was only one of all of the years that were being audited designated as such? I do want to say, he - you know, the president had said - the former president had said that he was constantly under audit. And the records that we now have show that he - you know, 2009 to 2013 were under audit, 2014 was under audit. The 2015 year was started the day that Chairman Neal asked for records. And it wasn't until 2016 return that was designated as a mandatory audit program. So all of those years were under audit. Just - were they under the mandatory audit?
