By Dan Geddes

WASHINGTON, DC – The New York Times has published the personal tax returns of President Donald Trump, precipitating a media frenzy on both sides of the American political spectrum.

President Trump himself immediately threatened to sue the Times in a furious multi-part tweet: “The failing New York Times will deeply regret the day they illegally published my totally perfect, error-free, tax returns.”

An anonymous whistle-blower—reported to be a long-time CIA agent on assignment in the White House—delivered them to the New York Times. The Times devoted a full, two-page spread to an analysis of Trump’s returns, putting the raw returns themselves in PDF format online.

Times editor Kane Bernstein said: “We couldn’t publish Trump’s entire tax returns in our print or online editions. While Trump’s tax returns are shorter than The Pentagon Papers they are still longer than The Unabomber Manifesto—and just as upsetting.”

According to the Times report, the highlights of Trump’s tax returns include:

• Trump submitted IRS Calculation Worksheets that included gratuitous taunts at IRS officials, as well as insults of political rivals Joe Biden, Mitt Romney, Hillary Clinton, and others.
• Trump used business loss carry-forward and carry-back schemes so complicated that they invariably crashed fragile IRS auditing software.
• Trump used highly dubious schemes to transfer wealth to his children, such as paying professional appraisers to grossly underestimate the value of the commercial properties, precious metals, or art objects that he gave to his children—all in order to pay much lower gift tax than the fair market value of the assets.
• Trump failed to indicate that he had visited North Korea during tax year 2017, despite that question being explicitly asked on his tax form, due to his foreign earned income.
• Trump declined to donate $3 to the Presidential Campaign Funds, as all taxpayers are asked to do.

Defending the President, Sean Hannity of FOX News tweeted: “Donald Trump did nothing wrong on his taxes, even if it’s possible that his accountants did. This illegal leak is part of the witch hunt against President Trump, whom future historians will certainly call ‘Honest Donald Trump’.”

IRS Response

Many have already called on the IRS to audit Trump again now that the egregious tax returns have been made public.

“IRS get off your ass!” tweeted Rachel Maddow. “Put your best team on The Donald.”

“In light of this new evidence, the IRS should assign a fresh army of auditors on the case of President Trump,” tweeted Presidential Candidate, Senator Elizabeth Warren.

Funding for IRS auditors has been cut substantially since Trump took office in 2017.

An IRS spokesperson, on condition of anonymity, spoke of the punishing physical and emotional toll that Trump’s tax returns has taken on senior auditors in past years. “Many IRS auditors have abruptly resigned their positions after being assigned to audit the Trump organization. A few auditors have even committed suicide. Trump’s returns are labyrinths, full of bogus asset evaluations, reams of worksheets with meaningless figures, loss carry-forwards and carry-backs so convoluted they crashed our systems. Few auditors have the physical and emotional stamina needed to work through Trump’s tax returns, which represent a sort of Mount Everest for tax auditors.”

Some people immediately wondered whether Trump’s auditors’ suicides were really suicides.

“Trump’s tax auditors committing suicide? Sounds suspicious to me. Maybe the Russians did Trump another favor,” tweeted Hillary Clinton.

“The New York Times should have published these tax returns in the Fiction section,” tweeted Joe Biden.

Tax Returns Contain Shocking Insults—and Orange Crayoning

Trump’s 4,733 page 1040 long form even includes worksheets containing gratuitous insults towards the IRS, as well as his political opponents, including:

• “The IRS can suck it.”
• “Pocahontas is a tax cheat too.”
• “Audit Hunter Biden. There’s probably crack residue on his tax return. If he even filed it.”

Other worksheets contained strange comments, such as “These are not the droids you’re looking for” appeared on Trump’s 1040 Schedule S scrawled in orange crayon.

Trump’s business loss calculation worksheets contain strange markings in an orange crayon, proven by forensic accountants to be an orange Crayola brand crayon. The IRS is still considering whether the orange crayon entries should be construed as a legal part of the tax return.

“Using crayon on tax forms—and outside the margins as well—is unprecedented in the annals of IRS history. We are still awaiting a tax court ruling on this one. The crayon marks may be interpreted to be more a type of meta-commentary on the tax-filing rather than part of the tax return proper.”

“While the evidence is strong that Trump has been a transparently dishonest businessman, we have not yet found a smoking gun that Trump violated tax law,” declared IRS spokesperson Stephen Wonder.