Quote (ThatAlex @ Aug 12 2016 12:19pm)
The decision for Donald Trump to not release his tax returns is a political one.
The criticsm he would recieve for the bad things in his tax return probably outweighs the criticism he will recieve for not releasing his tax return, especially against a candidate that also has transparency and trustworthiness issues with the American public.
Both of you are partially correct as to why he's making the decision to break with 50 years of precedent but it's not binary that he's either doing it either for personal or political reasons. He's not releasing because the damaging information relates to his personal and professional finances: he's not as wealthy as he claims, they would show he isn't very liquid (which to most would make him look even less wealthy), we already know he's paid 0% in income taxes for 4 years and the real number is probably 20 years for all we know, and he has seedy ties to foreign nations including Russia, which would be especially problematic now.
Those are all personal reasons as to why he wouldn't want to release his returns, plus the key political reason that he's temporarily running for president and has said previously he would release his returns, not to mention giving about 7 other, different answers as to how he'd handle the issue.