Trump’s Tax Returns Revealed. They Are A Disaster
Donald Trump paid no federal income taxes in 10 of the past 15 years, and just $750 in 2016, the year he transformed the US presidency into a high stakes version of his reality TV show persona.
In 2017, Trump paid the same amount he paid the previous year -- just $750.
The records, obtained by The New York Times, suggest Trump's boasts of superhuman business acumen are largely fictitious -- a figment of his own imagination and a product of delusions of grandeur, self-deception, or, more likely
Can’t wait to read this!
Like to be fair though, if the rules of the system say you can avoid paying something by creating losses. Than wouldn’t anyone who didn’t do that be dumb? Just talking about the logic of it, not about any words that have ever come out of his mouth.
He’s a failure — that’s the message here. Read The Times article. You take advantage of loopholes, sure. And you hire great accountants, obviously. You might even employ some marginally shady tactics. But you obviously don’t go out and squander tens (hundreds?) of millions of dollars on failure after failure after failure for the sole purpose of creating a tax loss carry forward. You might do something akin to that once, with a little bit of money, under some very specific circumstances, and you might do what he’s allegedly accused of doing by inflating or understating the value of assets to manipulate your tax bill, but nobody’s strategy is to consistently fail at everything they do. That happens because you don’t know what you’re doing.
I do hear you, but you make it sound like there’s no reason to spend hundreds of millions in order to be tax efficient. If you knew you had a large tax bill coming from one business, it would make sense to take that money and use it to do some large upgrade/investment in a failing business. Assuming there is actually reasons to keeping the losing businesses. For example if you have a building not generating a profit, upgrading all the infrastructure within the building would add value to the failing business and would be incredibly tax efficient. On a smaller scale, if you are going to have a normal size tax bill, then buy a new computer every year under a sole proprietorship and now you have a new computer and a smaller tax bill. Like am I wrong with my logic there?
Have you read The Times piece and, perhaps even more importantly, their previous investigative reports on the money from his father and Trump’s massive loss-making trials and tribulations from the late 80s and early 90s? If you haven’t read those, in their entirety, I encourage you to do so. There is only one way to describe his business career. These laborious efforts to explain away the obvious in the face of voluminous evidence and mounting investigations long ago passed the threshold into the absurd. I mean, at a certain point, when an outlet like The Times spends years and years explaining every conceivable detail (including answering the questions you’re posing dozens of times and from every conceivable angle) and puts it out for the public to read, if people don’t take the time to read it and digest it, then the burden is on the public. Sure, it’ll take you an hour (at least) to read all three of the investigative pieces I’m referring to here, but that’s the price of knowledge. It took me a month to read Piketty’s latest, but it’s necessary.
Appreciate your thoughts and will look into what you’re recommending. Thanks for everything you!!
No worries, and I mean, if you don’t want to read those investigative pieces, don’t read them. It’s your hour/two hours and you might well have something more important to do. I respect that. I just want to make sure that, in cases like these, people understand that The Times is offering the public the closest thing to first-hand information that you’re going to get short of actually reading the returns yourself. And, obviously, The Times consults tax experts when they write something like they did on Sunday and also last year and in 2018 for similar pieces. Sometimes, I have an informational edge on mainstream media — usually in matters related to markets. But I’m never going to have dozens of people feeding me something like the president’s hidden tax returns. So my point here isn’t to be abrasive, it’s just to say: “Look folks, read my summary to get the gist, but please, if you do have the time, read the original reporting too, because by god, it is good stuff”. That’s all I’m trying to say.
The worst person damaged in this story of Trump being broke is poor Melania.
Poor Trump. He can’t even pay the settlement from the prenup.
I suppose you’re correct, as far as tax laws go.
But it may be a problem for him or some folks over at Deustche Bank if the numbers on the tax returns are wildly different from those on lhis loan applications.
Might that be why some prosecutors are focusing on that? Dunno.
But, the base will not care.
What I read in the Times piece has no mention of charitable contributions by Trump. I would wager that the sum is equal to the taxes he paid…ZERO!
I thought the same thing. He hasn’t given back to the world, to our country, and has only been a siphon for his own benefit.
The story does report $130 million in charitable contributions over the years. A good portion of this was for a conversation easment on a property north of NYC. The contribution was taken after locals fought to prevent the land from being developed into a golf course and hotel. It would seem apparent that though, perhaps within guidelines, these are all for his benefit, to avoid taxes.
Who is going to support this guy after he is president? There is no information in the report that he has given to major instiutions, universities, hospitals, organization who feed orphans in Africa, or anything that benefits other humans.
We’ve had crooks and terrible presidents before. As far as the modern era goes, seems indisputable that Trump’s rating by scholars will be below both Dubya and Nixon. Sure, he’ll be considered consequential by said scholars.
Disgrace to our nation and the office.
Why would any bank loan him money with his record at losing it?? Why would any non-banking money source loan him money unless he could repay somehow in some way??
Every bank stopped loaning him except the highly corrupt Deutsche Bank.
Oe maybe, WHO would loan him money? Who does he owe?
4 years less about 10 days ago the Access Hollywood tape came out. I thought that should have been enough to make him crawl back into the slimy hole from whence he came. While interesting reading, I doubt this moves the needle come November 3rd one iota. Tragic.
I am curious to see if Trump’s support remains at 41% going forward.
What a nightmare. Let’s hope he is cuffed after handoff on Jan 20th.
I’m in my armchair saying this, so, please don’t attack me: “Worse than Nixon.”
I think about 25% will accept anything, Tramp can urinate on their faces and they will claim that’s golden rain.
The rest may change opinion.
The man has a lot to hide. He’s all show and no substance. A modern day snake oil salesman.
Look no further than him holding that bible up for the photo op in DC, the only reason he did that was to take advantage of people of faith for his own personal gain and variety, which is as sinful as it gets.
Businesses losing money, $300MM debt maturing – hope he has some very large bank accounts in Moscow . . .
It seems to me that people are missing the REAL STORY about trump’s taxes. Any intelligent person knows trump is a failure in business. Any moral person knows trump is a failure morally. These things were already widely known.
The REAL STORY that we learn from trump’s taxes is that he has no money and he has never had his own money. He squandered his inheritance long ago in numerous bankruptcies. He gets his money from foreign bank loans underwritten by other foreign entities. See, loans can be spent then taken as losses on tax returns. Remember the Buzzfeed bombshell last week about the global banking system pushing illicit funds in the billions all over the place? It’s not a coincidence that Buzzfeed dropped that article a week ago… https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.buzzfeednews.com/amphtml/jasonleopold/fincen-files-financial-scandal-criminal-networks
Who are these foreign entities? Why are they giving trump all this money? What do they get in return?
The answers are more or less obvious. And further trump knows he will be executed by his handlers once he is no longer useful to them just like his good friend Jeffery Epstein. That is why trump will fight tooth and nail to remain in office without regard for law or American Democracy. HIS LIFE DEPENDS ON IT.
Also, the whole nominate an unqualified psychotic delusional member of cult that believes in the enslavement of women to the Supreme Court is his attempt at distract. It’s the only play he has right now. There is a reason the announcement was literally yesterday. He knew this story was coming out. He has probably known about the story for a few weeks if not months.
One of the foreign entities was Turkey and they paid him 1 Million dollars. That was the price of buying our betrayal of the Kurds.
Goes a long way toward explaining why Trump is such a suckup with authoritarians. It’s not because he admires their machismo and approves of their policies (okay, maybe a little). It’s because Putin, Prince Bonesaw, Erdogan, Kim are all world-class grifters who have stolen billions from their people and could easily bail Trump out if he finds himself in a pickle. This pretty much assures Donald will be feasting on gerkins after 1.20.21.
Mark Twain warned of the man with the bible in one hand and the flag in the other hand.
Yes he can tell his people it is raining when he pees in their face. Long as he dog whistles.
McConnell and the boys need his base and are hoping the old American tradition of having a President from one party and congress from the other plays out this cycle.
“Long as he dog whistles.”
There it is in a nutshell.