Former US President Donald Trump (AP)

The US House Ways and Means Committee released on Friday former US President Donald Trump's tax returns for the years 2015-2020 after a protracted legal battle in which the former president sought to keep his tax information private.

New Internal Revenue Service (IRS) documents revealed that Trump's primary holding company, DJT Holdings LLC, accumulated in excess of $313 million in reported losses, Axios reported.

2015: -$34,146,723
2016: -$64,497,128
2017: -$57,865,495
2018: -$53,474,978
2019: -$43,637,068
2020: -$59,945,432

Trump's complex business had recorded a huge total cumulative loss of $313,566,824. According to Axios, during each of those years, DJT Holdings reported assets worth $600 million, which would be sufficient to cover losses.

Axios highlighted that "the documents make clear that DJT Holdings was not profitable during 2015-2020," which Trump's company used "to take full advantage of strategies that kept it from paying taxes during those years."

In a statement posted to Truth Social, Trump slammed the release of his returns as politically motivated.

According to the former President, the documents "once again show how proudly successful I have been and how I have been able to use depreciation and various other tax deductions" to create jobs and "magnificent structures".

A Tug-of-war

The tax returns were initially acquired in November by the US House Ways and Means Committee after Trump unusually kept them hidden when other presidents before him have kept them public over their whole presidential term.

Not only did Trump conceal the returns, but he refused to release them when asked to, which exacerbated suspicions regarding foreign business transactions or that he was paying fewer taxes than the average American.

After a lengthy game of tug-of-war, the Supreme Court took over to resolve the matter. After a three-year legal battle, the Court gave the go-ahead last month for the impending delivery of Trump's tax returns to the US House Ways and Means Committee.

The Court denied Trump's request for an order that would have prevented the Treasury Department from providing the Committee with six years' worth of tax returns.

The Joint Committee on Taxation published a 39-page report last week exposing Trump for paying little in taxes, including only $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017 and none in 2020.

The report stated that the IRS was required to review his taxes for mandatory auditing, which no president is exempt from, but they didn't begin doing so until after the Ways and Means Committee requested information on the mandatory audits in 2019.

Back in July 2021, the Trump Organization, the family real-estate company that led former President Trump down the road to fame, was accused of running a 15-year tax evasion scheme. Allen Weisselberg, a senior Trump Organization advisor and former company CFO, pleaded guilty to 15 charges brought against him in the case.