The longer Donald J. Trump goes without releasing his income tax returns, the more suspicious voters will be that he's trying to hide something. It's entirely possible that everything on the presumptive Republican presidential nominee's tax forms could at once be perfectly legal and politically disastrous.

That's because the U.S. tax system is exceedingly kind to billionaires, providing them loopholes and exemptions beyond the imagination of ordinary taxpayers, tricks known intimately to a relative few high-priced tax lawyers. Real estate developers, like Trump, are particularly well-supplied with tax-avoidance strategies.

Every presidential candidate since Gerald Ford has released his tax forms. But no one of Trump's putative wealth — he claims to be worth $10 billion — has ever been a major party nominee. That's one reason that seeing his tax forms would be so important for the public and so dangerous for him. It could demonstrate the institutional inequity built into the tax system.

Trump has vacillated on the question of when and if he'd release his tax returns, which he called "very beautiful." At first he said he'd like to release them, but he was being audited. Legally, that's irrelevant. Then he said no, he wouldn't release them, and that what he paid in taxes was nobody's business. As of a week ago, he said he'd like to release them, but possibly not until after November.

The Republican establishment has been hammering Trump for his failure to disclose. But his more ardent supporters may not care; none of his previous outrageous positions dented his popularity. That could change if the tax forms showed any of these perfectly legal gimmicks, as outlined by Pulitzer Prize-winning tax journalist David Cay Johnston:

—As a real estate professional, he could show little taxable income, investing and managing properties full-time, living on the cash flow and deducting unlimited losses.

—He could borrow against his assets to finance his lifestyle, postponing his tax bill indefinitely. He could write off a huge staff, private planes and perhaps even homes as business expenses.

—He could claim any number of the 500 corporations he says he controls as "pass through" entities whose earnings are treated as personal income, and he could headquarter them offshore for tax purposes.

—He can claim massive donations to charity. The big question is: Which charities? His campaign manager has said Trump has given $100 million to veterans charities in recent years, but has provided little documentation.

There's a simple way to end the speculation: Release the tax forms, whatever they show. Before Donald Trump can claim to be worthy of the presidency, he owes the truth to the American people. Or at least the American people's ability to find the truth for themselves.

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