N.J. first to pass presidential tax return bill

The New Jersey Legislature has become what supporters say is the first in the nation to pass a bill that would prevent presidential candidates from appearing on the November ballot unless they disclose their tax returns for the five most recent years before an election.

The Democratic-controlled Assembly passed the measure on Thursday, despite its unproven constitutionality and over objections from Republicans. The vote came three days after the Democrat-controlled Senate did the same.

The bill now heads to Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, who is likely to veto such an overt knock against President Donald Trump, his longtime friend and political ally whom he has defended on a range of controversial issues, including Trump's refusal to release his tax returns.

But the Assembly’s vote puts New Jersey at the center of a national debate over the ability of state lawmakers to impose requirements on candidates for national office — a debate that many observers predict is headed for the courts.

In light of Trump’s highly publicized refusal to release his income tax returns during the 2016 presidential campaign, a longstanding tradition among presidential candidates, New York introduced legislation last year called the Tax Returns Uniformly Made Public, or TRUMP, Act to try to coerce candidates in future elections to release their returns.

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New Jersey and at least 21 other states followed suit with similar legislation, according to a report published last week by the National Conference of State Legislatures. The bill in New Jersey would apply to candidates for president and vice president.

Assemblyman Jay Webber, R-Morris, led the Republican charge against the measure on Thursday, calling it “transparently political” and “blatantly unconstitutional” in remarks on the Assembly floor.

“We all know the majority party wants to redo 2016. It’s not going to happen. The vote is over,” he said. “This body and the New Jersey State Senate and the governor of the state of New Jersey has no authority to add additional requirements to who can run for president of the United States.”

States have taken up the issue since Trump broke 40 years of tradition by declining to release his tax returns. He said he has kept them secret because the returns are under audit, but his insistence on keeping them from public view has raised questions over how much he has earned, paid in taxes — if anything at all in some years — and given to charity. And with law enforcement and Congress looking into potential ties between Trump and Russia, skeptics say the tax returns could show what financial interests the president may have there.

Christie, whose office declined to comment, has backed Trump's decision to withhold his tax returns. During the campaign, Christie said Trump was simply following the advice of his lawyers and accountants. But Christie, who has released his tax returns each year he's been governor, added that there was another reason for Trump to keep the returns private.

"Given the partisan history of the IRS and the Obama administration to use the IRS as a weapon against conservative groups and conservative candidates, I don't blame the lawyers and accountants for saying that better safe than sorry when trusting the IRS," Christie said during a September appearance on CNN's "State of the Union." "I'll tell you, I bet your listeners and your viewers out there don't trust the IRS as far as they can throw them. And so I don't blame Donald Trump's lawyers and accountants for telling him, until the book is closed and the IRS can't go after you, you shouldn't release your tax returns."

When The New York Times obtained a portion of Trump's 1995 taxes last October and reported that his losses could mean that he didn't have to pay taxes for the next 18 years, Christie praised Trump, saying that "there's no one who's shown more genius in their way to maneuver around the tax code as he rightfully used the laws to do that."

But Trump did pay taxes in at least one year in the last two decades. This week the reporter David Cay Johnston obtained portions of Trump's 2005 tax returns — and the White House then released the documents — showing he paid about $38 million in taxes on $150 million in income. The problem for many lawmakers, though, is that the public is learning these details in bits and pieces, not because the president has released them.

The bill New Jersey lawmakers approved would apply to the 2020 election and beyond.

But Democratic Assemblyman John McKeon of Essex, the bill’s sponsor and an attorney, said that the Supreme Court’s decision in the 2000 case Bush v. Gore suggests that “states have much latitude as it relates to the rule making concerning placing individuals on the ballot.”

States might also have a way to impose eligibility requirements on candidates by regulating how their electoral college contingent votes.

New Jersey and other states won't know the constitutionality of the bill until it is passed somewhere and challenged in court, McKeon said.

“I can’t stand before you … to say what the United States Supreme Court will do,” McKeon said. “I can say that there’s more than a colorable argument.”

Staff Writer Dustin Racioppi contributed to this report. 

Email: pugliese@northjersey.com