Century-old feud between millionaires the key to Trump's tax returns
By Isaac Stanley-Becker
May 7 at 6:36 AM
... The tax feud became linked to the Teapot Dome Scandal, a bribery incident beginning in 1921 in which President Warren G. Harding’s interior secretary gave a political friend access to oil leases without competitive bidding ...
In 1924, Mellon became involved in a bitter dispute with Couzens, a Republican lawmaker and former treasurer of the Ford Motor Co. The senator allied with the progressive wing of the Republican Party, which opposed the effort by Calvin Coolidge, who took over as president upon Harding’s death in 1923, to slash taxes.
Making his case against the administration’s plans, Couzens disclosed he had escaped a heavy tax burden by investing much of his wealth in tax-exempt securities, a practice that Mellon sought to limit by reducing surtax rates. But Couzens argued the treasury secretary’s fiscal strategy would “help the rich.”
Mellon seized on the senator’s revelation about his taxes to accuse him of hypocrisy for paying so little while seeking to block efforts to lower duties on other Americans. As he wrote to Couzens, “Must a system of taxation which permits a man with an income of over $1,000,000 a year to pay not one cent to the support of his Government remain unaltered?” ...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/05/07/century-old-feud-between-millionaires-is-now-key-getting-trumps-tax-returns/?utm_term=.7034627acdb1