Thread by @smbrnsn

So some people have been asking @CBHessick why we should care about the president's taxes if everything he's done is legal.

First, it's not clear that everything has been legal. But assume it is/

I assume her interlocutors' feeling comes from the SCOTUS opinion in Helvering: 1/

"Any one may so arrange his affairs that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which will best pay the Treasury; there is not even a patriotic duty to increase one’s taxes." 2/ uniset.ca/other/cs5/69F2…

Which is fine, I suppose. It's a really popular statement that is quoted in judicial opinions, tax textbooks, articles, and all over the internet.

And it's not wrong.

But it leaves out the next important part of the opinion: 3/

"Nevertheless, it does not follow that Congress meant to cover such a transaction, not even though the facts answer the dictionary definitions of each term used in the statutory definition." 4/

What this means in short: just because you technically tick off all of the boxes in the Internal Revenue Code doesn't mean that, when you put all of those boxes together, you've complied with the law. You can't technicality yourself out of being a tax cheat. 5/

So even assuming Trump didn't technically do anything wrong if you look at each piece of his returns individually doesn't mean he didn't do anything wrong. #TrumpTaxReturns 6/6