There is no evidence that staff from the Connecticut Department of Revenue Services disclosed any tax record information, the commissioner of the department said on Monday. The statement comes two days after the New York Times reported that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump might not have paid federal income taxes for nearly two decades, but the commissioner's statement makes no mention of Trump.
“State law prohibits me from any detailed comment on this particular tax record information,” Commissioner Kevin Sullivan, of the state Department of Revenue Services, said in a statement.
A story the New York Times published online late Saturday says the news organization anonymously received the first pages of Trump's 1995 state income tax filings in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.
The filings show a net loss of $915,729,293 in federal taxable income for the year.
“I can say that, based on our internal review, there is no reason to believe that any Connecticut tax records were disclosed by anyone at our agency,” Sullivan said in a statement.
“It is not uncommon for taxpayers to have income in more than one state so that one state’s tax records are simply part of the documentation for filing in another state or federally. More important, there are so many other possible sources like family members, employees, lawyers, accountants – especially if someone was disgruntled over not being paid or otherwise treated badly,” the statement from Sullivan says.
“At a policy level, any situation like this is a wake-up call. The federal tax code can be manipulated to avoid taxation even while making lots of money,” Sullivan said in an email. “That’s all the worse because the burden then trickles down to all the other taxpayers who do not have the resources to game the system.”
