We seem to have the first answer on what’s in Trump’s tax returns.
He hasn’t paid taxes for 18 years
The New York Times received Trump’s 1995 tax returns in the mail, with a Trump Tower return address. They took them to Trump’s ex accountant (now retired) and he confirmed they are legitimate. Then they had tax experts look at them.
It’s legal, but all knowledge is worth having
Update [2016-10-2 19:27:41 by nalbar]: So right now we are getting an inkling of the planned Clinton end game. Last week was with Trumps distraction with Machado, this week Taxes with the reporter hinting more details to follow
Update [2016-10-2 19:27:41 by nalbar]:Republican Surrogates Respond in this Diary! Read comments below!
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Who knew that a single tax return tells all about tax returns for the next seventeen years.
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What a shame all those IRS auditors have been unable to bust Trump for eighteen years. What a shame lawmakers set up tax code that allows people to become billionaires and pay little to no taxes. And US voters are stupid enough to keep electing the same sort of representatives that are always angling for lower taxes on the wealthy and lower taxes and fewer regulations on corporations.
Wonder if Sheldon Adelson has paid any taxes — he has, after all, gotten much richer and much faster than Trump.
Tax avoidance is much easier for those with asset portfolios such as Trump’s. Cash flow good enough to maintain a luxury lifestyle but for tax accounting purposes, real property investments can easily show a loss. It’s one of the reasons why the estate tax is so absolutely necessary because that’s one of the few points in time when the taxman can get at some of the deferred taxes.
This HRC statement is very carefully worded:
“…could have allowed him to legally skip paying federal income taxes for years.”
Other media are being just as careful:
“A report in the New York Times says a $916 million loss in the ’90s might have allowed Donald Trump to legally avoid paying any income taxes for almost two decades.” (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)
Everybody else is also being equally careful.
Why?
Because they don’t know anything truly incriminating or even possibly critical, that’s why. I am very suspicious of this whole thing. Trump himself may have laid this trap, or it could be some kind of put-up job from who knows where.
What if the returns are real, the pro-HRC makes a lot of noise about it and then the Donald says:
“Ahhhh…OK. here are my returns,” and they don’t show the worst case scenario being trumpeted by the anti-Trumpsters?
What then?
And so on and so forth.
Just more political hogwash.
AG
P.S. I’d love to see the real books from the Clinton Foundation.
Wouldn’t you?
It’ll never hapen unless some whistleblower hacks their shit.
Not in a million years.
Bet on it.
P.P.S. Read my sig. I trust none of them. i have a sneaking suspicion that I am in the majority in this country now. No ne trusts even the supposedly trustworthy ones.
Once burned, twice shy?
How about this one:
Sounds about right to me…
Apparently real. If Trump sent it himself, what would be a plausible rational for him doing so. I can only think of one, a last, and seemingly non-participating, attempt to lose the election. His responses to this disclosure are as emotional and inept as his responses have been to everything that’s been throw at him the in the past week, digging a deeper hole for himself.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to recognize how he could have played all of this from anywhere from minimizing the damage to scoring a point or two for himself. His one trick schtick — I’m great and my opponents are losers — has stopped working and revealing him to be childishly emotional and ignorant of anything not DonaldInc.
Great!!!
If you’re right, now all we need to worry about is HRC and the continuation of the neoliberal freefall.
Sigh…
AG
Waste of time and energy to worry about HRC. Time to start gaming out all the options for 2018 and 2020.
They say “could” have let him not pay taxes since they only have the 1995 returns (which were mailed to NYT anonymously). But tax rules allow you to carry the losses for 20 years, so that means Trump could claim 46M loss per year for 20 years – ie, unless he earned more than 46M some year he would pay no taxes (and who knows what future losses he claimed).
Sadly, this is legal if he actually had those losses.
iirc from the WSJ article, the loss carryforward provision in 1995 was limited to fifteen years. Guess Congress changed that to twenty years sometime after 1995 because fifteen wasn’t generous enough to their supporters. Can also elect a carryback for up to two years. Thus, if Trump paid zero taxes in those fifteen years, his total net taxable income (before NOL deduction) for those years could have been no more than the $916 million. No wonder some are skeptical of Trump’s claim to be a multi-billionaire.
This is all from Lawyers, Guns and Money but you can find the verbiage from Trump’s campaign anywhere:
“Mr. Trump is a highly-skilled businessman who has a fiduciary responsibility to his business, his family and his employees to pay no more tax than legally required,” the statement said. “That being said, Mr. Trump has paid hundreds of millions of dollars in property taxes, sales and excise taxes, real estate taxes, city taxes, state taxes, employee taxes and federal taxes.”
The statement continued: “Mr. Trump knows the tax code far better than anyone who has ever run for President and he is the only one that knows how to fix it.”
Separately, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, Marc E. Kasowitz, emailed a letter to The Times arguing that publication of the records is illegal because Mr. Trump has not authorized the disclosure of any of his tax returns. Mr. Kasowitz threatened “prompt initiation of appropriate legal action.”
Now that’s what I call a winning message: our boss is a successful businessman who lost a billion dollars, he totally paid all the other taxes, because he’s a tax cheat he knows how to fix the tax code, and if you publish this, we’ll sue you.
I think the “Republican surrogate” description is rather an exaggeration. Sure, you’re dealing with commenters who loathe Hillary Clinton, but they’re not GOP surrogates.
When you come to a progressive community and spend 24/7 writing with a clear intent of suppressing the vote for Clinton, you are an asset to the Trump campaign.
The people doing this know what they’re doing. It’s irrelevant that they claim to no be fans of Trump. If their guidance was acted upon by voters, there would be a greater chance of a Trump Presidency.
They know this, and they don’t care. Sit with that fact for a while.
I understand your perspective. There are many ways to poison the well, I suppose.
Everyone should watch this video
It’s classic surrogate work, following the Trump campaign memo that was leaked two weeks ago. First he starts talking about the tax code, and how it needs reform, then he starts talking about Clinton. That’s because the main Trump campaign theme is ‘when something hurts us, connect it to Clinton so some of it sticks to her’.
Now reread the posts in this diary. Some follow the same basic form used in the video.
Now go here and reread it, with a cynical eye.
This is classic. It’s a diary from Booman discussing how Trump has lost more people that would normally be sympathetic to any republican. There is not one word in that diary about Clinton or democrats, because the whole point is how REPUBLICANS are out of the norm.
Then suddenly,
One post claiming everyone who voted for Clinton loves themselves some Kissinger (and how disgusting that is), another on how Kerry hates his job, and a complete non sequitur about a democrat being raped by another democrat. The last has the requisite ‘I can’t believe you don’t support rape victims when the perp is a democrat’.
And the diary is completely hijacked, with the discussion now being how beyond normal DEMOCRATS are. It’s classic surrogate. Right down to the choice of words…always the worst descriptive words reserved for democrats, or choosing the most unflattering pictures.
Virtually all of Booman’s diaries now follow this pattern, so much so even he has started to complain about it. And forget about diaries like mine, they are easy pickings.
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That is indeed a good example. Kissinger as a bogeyman, held up to discredit so-called neoliberal Democrats in general and Hillary Clinton in particular, has been a very popular tactic here. The rhetorical trick adopted is usually “if you don’t explicitly denounce X, then it must mean that you support X”. This is absurd, of course.
As you probably know, I have locked horns repeatedly with the person who hijacked the discussion thread you referenced. The responses have generally included ad hominem remarks about my laziness and ignorance.
The disruptions, hijackings, and over-the-top Clinton bashing are indisputable. Is it possible, however, that at least some of these commenters are bitter Bernie-or-Bust folks? The reason I ask this is personal: some years ago, I used to be like those folks. I’d denounce people on the left whom I considered ideologically suspect. I’d adopt a bitter, defensive, cynical tone about damn near everything.
In terms of the big picture, people’s motivations don’t much matter.
Yes I have noticed the ‘locked horns’.
Your comment brings up many comment paths in my mind, but I’ll contribute on the main one….Sanders.
Yes, of course there is an over lap. But I’m more cynical than you….I never saw the support for Sanders (from the main hijackers) as genuine. It was a convenient way to disguise Clinton Derangement and republican beliefs. One in particular is a past (on this site, openly for many years) Ron Paul and Rand Paul supporter, in other words, a republican. That history suddenly got disappeared in a desire for attention, as long as the diaries had the necessary anti Clinton positions.
The ‘tell’ is that the main people rarely espouse progressive positions, unless it’s ‘safe’ (unlikely to be implemented), and CONSTANTLY deride true progressive progress (like the affordable care act, for instance).
And then there is the racial component. There is a certain segment that wants the old Moynihan Democratic Party back. I believe that was a large part of Sanders appeal. Those types can’t stand Obama, can’t say a single good thing about him, but can’t openly explain (even to themselves) quite why they feel that way. They can’t or won’t accept that the Democratic Party base is African American now. When Booman show them lists of who would control committees if democrats retook the house, they cringe. They HATE that Clinton goes to black churches. They (like in another diary) want Clinton to appeal to the overt racist Trump supporters, not caring that the African American democrats (the base) would be appalled. That’s a feature for them, not a bug.
Probably more than you bargained for, but WTH, it’s my diary.
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Evidently Booman does sometimes ban people. I was away for a week or so and since I’ve returned, I’ve noticed there have been no more comments from an individual whose denunciations of Hillary Clinton were combined with advocacy of conspiracy theories and whom Booman warned “quit being an apologist for Putin”, or words to that effect.
You are absolutely right, centerfielddj. I really do not care which of the Scylla and Charybdis twins win. They both simply offer different kinds of failure as I am concerned. Trump might be quicker than HRC to tank, but for all I really know quicker might be better. Less time to get into a nuclear war, for instance.
However…that does not mean that people like Marie and myself are “assets” of the Trump campaign. It means that we are trying to be assets for the people of the United States. I was way early in warning self-satisfied leftinesses like yourself that Trump was a serious danger. Back in early July, 2015…while all of you leftinesses were having a fine old time laughing about what a clown he was…I said that you should take him seriously. You did not do so until well after he won the nomination and here we jolly well are, aren’t we.
In the long run your two-dimensional view of the U.S. political scene is going to bring us another stick figure like Barack Obama.
Our “Peace President.”
WTFU.
AG
am going to take this further, centerfield.
All the way to the bleacher seats.
From Lisa Pease, who used to post regularly here but apparently got tired of preaching to a largely deaf and dumb choir.
You think that is “pro-Trump?”
In a stick figure, two-dimensioal world, I suppose it is.
In three dimensions?
It’s just the truth(s) of the matter, unalloyed by any centrist hustle.
So it goes.
AG
Dig yourself and a hole and crawl in it.
I’ve loved the “Trump is a genius” spin that has made the rounds today. The reaction of the true believers reminds me of this bit from Community, when the Dean has a meltdown filming a new ad for the college:
That’s awesome!
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As if Trump does his own taxes! He lost a billion bucks and the only genius in the equation would have been his tax accountants and lawyers.
It all depends what the meaning of “is” is.
Go tell that to Giuliani, please.
Your argument appears to be that Trump has no agency in this matter at all – no ability to control who he hires to prepare his taxes, no communication with those responsible for his finances regarding what he is earning, what he is losing, and what is considered taxable income. That somehow each tax season he is blindfolded, handed a pen, and his hand is placed where he is expected to sign. Wow. The guy is practically held hostage by his own staff. My sympathies go out to him.
Or is this just another one of those “Clinton Bad, Trump Less Bad” responses?
Your argument appears to be that Trump has no agency in this matter at all …
Not at all if one reads and comprehends by comments. Was merely noting that Trump is no genius. Not in business nor federal taxation. On his own, he would have taken the multi-millions from his father and turned it into zero.
However, can’t ignore that many ordinary people and big time bankers and investors have been bamboozled by this crude, no-nothing blowhard. Slap a celebrity label, logo, etc. on the any POS and people willingly give up their time and/or money to feel important by proxy. Not an admirable human quality, but one PR and advertising pros know how to exploit.
So he’s a genius at hiring lawyers and accountants, as he might claim. The big unanswered question remains who does Trump owe today, and how much?
“As if Trump does his own taxes! He lost a billion bucks and the only genius in the equation would have been his tax accountants and lawyers.”
Because, after all, unlike John and Jane Q. Public, who almost certainly review what H&R Block did with their tax returns, Donald Trump doesn’t bother to look. He never discusses tax strategies with his tax accountants and lawyers.
Of course. Donald Trump would never ever know what he was signing off on, and would never ever discuss such matters with any of his accounting and legal staff. Sounds like a very smart way to conduct one’s business and personal financial affairs.
Plausible Deniability.
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Of course he knew what he was signing off on. How many people wouldn’t sign off on anything that meant they paid nothing? And wouldn’t ask any questions or bother to know the details of why they paid nothing and wouldn’t be happy with the results of their lawyers and accountants? Or privately brag that they paid nothing as if they’d figured out all by themselves how to pay nothing.
This is a rather silly discussion because so far no information has surfaced that anything illegal exists in Trump’s tax returns. The question that we should all be asking is why are US tax codes set up to favor people like Trump and profitable corporations? Why all the loopholes for the “haves.” OTOH, those loopholes keep armies of tax attorneys and accountants and lobbyists employed.
I have not read comments here alleging illegality on Trump’s part. The New York Times did not allege that, either. And of course you are right that the US tax code favors people like Trump and ought to be reformed. But really, you know perfectly well that what people have been criticizing is Trump’s hypocrisy: he portrays himself as the champion of the working man and woman, who almost certainly do pay income tax, but pays none himself.
Not buying that you or anyone else not in the Trump camp are talking about Trump not paying federal taxes because it reveals his hypocrisy. Hypocrisy and Trump have been well known for quite some time. Plus, Democrats are cool with hypocrisy when it’s displayed by those on their side of the aisle.
It’s being focused on because Democratic partisans believe that Harry Reid’s statement that he had in on good sources that Romney hadn’t paid any federal taxes for years was a key element in his loss. I tend to doubt that by election day it was much if a factor for voters, but for the few it was, it wasn’t about Romney’s hypocrisy. In addition:
45.3% of Americans pay no federal income tax.
Congratulations. You managed to comment on something that I wrote without slinging insults.
Your comment is an insult.
AG
So is your rating.
AG
Nobody can see it, but I’m LMFAO.
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Yeh, the usual suspects are behaving exactly as you knew they would.
Can’t beat the free entertainment. Should probably not ask for an encore.
Sanders Announces Bill to Close Tax Loopholes Used by Trump
Well, at least someone is aiming higher than gotcha politics on Trump’s non-payment of federal taxes. Now we’ll see who in Congress and the WH is with him and who is with Trump and those like him.
Good for Senator Sanders.
But good gawd. You wrote above that people writing about Trump’s tax schemes has nothing to do with his hypocrisy. Did you happen to read what John and Jane Q. Public had to say? Just one example here. Most people were appalled by Trump’s “that makes me smart” remark.
You denied a simple fact, and redirected your remarks into informing us that “Democrats are cool with hypocrisy when it’s displayed by those on their side of the aisle.”
Yep. Democrats are not perfect. They’re fallible human beings, just like you and me. Your criticisms would be a helluva lot easier to digest if you demonstrated some recognition of that simple fact. Instead what we get from you is a constant stream of remarks about how you maintain your rectitude and integrity while wading through the swamp of hypocrisy and lies where the rest of us live.
Thanks for providing an example of what centerfielddj and nalbar wrote about above.
If only Sanders was running for President against Trump, he would DEVISTATE Trump for not releasing his taxes.
Oh, wait……..
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