Donald Trump, our most relatable president, has filed for an extension on his 2018 taxes.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced the news on Tuesday, Tax Day, at her daily press conference.
Trump hasn’t filed his 2017 taxes yet.
— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) April 17, 2018
He “filed an extension ... as do many Americans with complex returns. He will file his tax return by the extension deadline of October 15, 2018,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders says.
It’s true, many Americans do procrastinate on their taxes and file for an extension: FiveThirtyEight reported that about 13 million Americans asked for an extra six months to complete their tax forms in 2015. However, for what it’s worth, it appears President Obama was pretty good about filing his taxes by the April deadline.
Of course, there might be a few reasons Trump is late like so many of us. His business — which he has not fully divested from and which is the subject of an ongoing lawsuit from the state of Maryland and Washington, DC — is complicated, after all.
Maybe this will be the year that Trump finally releases his tax returns for the American people to see, as he neglected to do during the 2016 presidential campaign, and he wants to make sure they’re right.
Or, my favorite theory: This is a covert way to draw more attention to the Republican tax bill. The New York Times reported this week that “no one’s talking about the new tax law,” given the way news coverage has fallen off since the bill passed and Republicans have struggled to turn it into an effective campaign message.
Trump didn’t seem to like the suggestion that his signature legislative achievement had already been forgotten.
So many people are seeing the benefits of the Tax Cut Bill. Everyone is talking, really nice to see!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 17, 2018