The Supreme Court’s decision adds another twist in a yearslong debate over whether the president should release his tax returns.
In September 2016, Donald J. Trump stood on the debate stage as a presidential candidate and addressed a question that had dogged him on the campaign trail: When would he release his tax return?
“I’m under a routine audit, and it’ll be released,” Mr. Trump said. “And as soon as the audit is finished, it will be released.”
Nearly four years later, the White House says the I. R. S. is still at it.
“His taxes are under audit, and when they’re no longer under audit he will release them,” Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary, told reporters on Thursday.
In fact, every sitting president’s returns are audited as a matter of routine, and the I. R. S. has long said that nothing prevents an individual from making tax returns public while an audit is underway. Every president since Jimmy Carter has voluntarily released his returns.
So at this point, no one is expecting to see the president’s tax returns anytime soon, even though the Supreme Court issued a major ruling on Thursday that cleared the way for New York prosecutors to seek them. But there will be further skirmishing in the lower courts, and there is little chance of a final decision before the next election.
Mr. Trump has promised to release his tax returns under varying conditions for nearly a decade.
In 2011, he began appearing on television to question whether President Barack Obama was born in the United States — spreading a lie that he has never fully apologized for — and suggesting that he would release his returns when Mr. Obama released his birth certificate.
“Maybe I’m going to do the tax returns when Obama does his birth certificate,” he said in an interview with ABC in April 2011. “I’d love to give my tax returns. I may tie my tax returns into Obama’s birth certificate.”
Days after that interview, Mr. Obama released his long-form birth certificate.
Mr. Trump did not keep his end of the deal.
