I'm sure that his returns are full of bullshit that he shouldn't have deducted. Someone like him will deduct every fucking meal he eats, every trip he takes, etc.
The bigger reveal is that his businesses lose a shitload of money. These are not the type of losses that are solely related to taking advantage of the tax code (i.e. depreciation of real estate costs, etc.) as the losses are way too fucking big.
He is basically inflating the values of his properties, which allows for more borrowing on lines of credit, and spending it.
As I mentioned before...I'm curious as to why his interest income is growing so much. He has very little dividend income which is very strange as a billionaire. I have clients that just don't like the stock market and would rather invest their money in land/real estate, etc, but someone who claims to be a billionaire would certainly have more investment income than that.
I'm not sure if his returns will reveal the true source of that interest income but my guess is that it relates to contract sales from maybe Saudi and/or Russian sources.
Remember the Thomas Nine !! (10/02/2018)
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago 2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy 2013: London ON, Chicago; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE) 2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston 2020: Oakland, Oakland:2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana 2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville 2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana
I wonder how much income tax Hillary Clinton paid in those twenty years of tax returns she released? Hmmmmm. From WaPo:
The returns show that Trump paid little, if anything, in income taxes over six years including the four in which he served as president. They have also raised questions over the lengths he took to claim tax deductions on items that may not warrant it to evade paying taxes.
I wonder how much income tax Hillary Clinton paid in those twenty years of tax returns she released? Hmmmmm. From WaPo:
The returns show that Trump paid little, if anything, in income taxes over six years including the four in which he served as president. They have also raised questions over the lengths he took to claim tax deductions on items that may not warrant it to evade paying taxes.
A $14,277 penalty? Great planning....and don't you think that tRump must have signed for Melania? lol...even the date is the same handwriting
he totally signed her name and date, lmao
I looked this up...that is very likely her signature. Some reporter had dug into it a few years back and said that Melania had been trained to sign her name like that. She crosses the T which matches other signatures of hers. Very odd but that makes sense.
Remember the Thomas Nine !! (10/02/2018)
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago 2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy 2013: London ON, Chicago; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE) 2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston 2020: Oakland, Oakland:2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana 2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville 2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana
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The Juggler
Behind that bush over there. Posts: 47,279
Why would she have to be trained on how to sign her name?
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
As great as Walters the Journalist was, he figured out how to become president, and damn nearly overthrew the oldest government of elected representatives in the world, and still might.
On their 2020 income tax returns, the Trizzumps paid no federal income taxes and claimed a refund of $5.47 million.
once again...
After January 6th 2021, he filed a US Tax return to the IRS for the year 2020, where he claimed a refund of 5.47 million dollars.
Smart
I’m not a tax professional so I’m seriously asking :
Is this a reflection on trump or our tax laws? Did he do anything wrong? Or are our tax laws trash?
can reasonably guarantee he was using the same item(s) for deductions across several of his companies..... Would seem to require a dedicated team of auditors for just the fuckstick org alone.....
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Trump’s returns shed light on tax offsets, foreign accounts
By MICHAEL R. SISAK, JILL COLVIN and CHRIS RUGABER
yesterday
Democrats in Congress released thousands of pages of former President Donald Trump’s
tax returns Friday, providing the most detailed picture to date of his
finances over a six-year period, including his time in the White House,
when he fought to keep the information private in a break with decades of precedent.
The documents include individual returns from Trump and his wife, Melania,
along with Trump’s business entities from 2015-2020. They show how
Trump used the tax code to lower his tax obligation and reveal details
about foreign accounts, charitable contributions and the performance of
some of his highest-profile business ventures, which had largely
remained shielded from public scrutiny.
The
disclosure marks the culmination of a yearslong legal fight that has
played out everywhere from the presidential campaign to Congress and the
Supreme Court
as Trump persistently rejected efforts to share details about his
financial history — counter to the practice of transparency followed by
all his predecessors in the post-Watergate era. The records release
comes just days before Republicans retake control of the House and weeks after Trump announced another campaign for the White House.
The
records show how Trump limited his tax liability by offsetting his
income against corporate losses as well as millions of dollars in
business expenses, asset depreciation and other deductions.
While
Trump paid $641,931 in federal income taxes in 2015, the year he began
his campaign for president, he paid just $750 in 2016 and 2017,
according to a report released last week by Congress’ nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation. He paid nearly $1 million in 2018, but only $133,445 in 2019 and nothing in 2020, the year he unsuccessfully sought reelection.
The records also detail Trump’s foreign holdings.
Trump,
according to the filings, reported having bank accounts in China,
Ireland and the United Kingdom in 2015 through 2017, even as he was
commander in chief. Starting in 2018, however, he only reported an
account in the U.K. The returns also show that Trump claimed foreign tax
credits for taxes he paid on various business ventures around the
world, including licensing arrangements for use of his name on
development projects and his golf courses in Scotland and Ireland.
In
several years, Trump appears to have paid more in foreign taxes than he
did in net U.S. federal income taxes, with income reported in countries
including Azerbaijan, China, India, Indonesia, Panama, the Philippines,
St. Martin, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.
The
documents also show that Trump’s charitable donations often represented
only a sliver of his income. In 2020, the year the coronavirus ravaged
the economy, Trump reported no charitable donations at all. In 2019 and
2018 he reported writing checks for about $500,000 in donations. In
earlier years the numbers were higher — $1.8 million in 2017 and $1.1
million in 2016.
It’s
unclear whether the reported sums included Trump’s $400,000 annual
presidential salary, which he had said, as a candidate, that he would
forgo and which he claimed he donated to various federal departments.
Jeff
Hoopes, an accounting professor at the University of North Carolina’s
Kenan-Flagler Business School, described Trump’s returns as “large and
complicated” with “hundreds of entities scattered all over the globe.”
He noted that many of those entities are slightly unprofitable, which he described as “pretty magical as far as the tax code.”
“It’s
hard to know if someone’s really bad at business or really good at tax
planning, because they both look like the same thing,” he said.
Daniel
Shaviro, a taxation professor at New York University, cited the large
financial losses from so many of Trump’s businesses, despite their often
healthy sales, as something that should raise suspicions from auditors.
“There’s fishy looking stuff here.”
Shaviro
also cited examples of suspicious or sloppy math even in smaller
businesses, such as an aviation firm dubbed “DT Endeavor I LLC,” which
in 2020 reported both sales and expenses of $160,144. Such exact matches
are unusual, Shaviro said. Yet the form also reported an $18,923 loss.
“The return doesn’t say, ‘Guess what? I’m committing fraud,’” Shaviro said, “but there are red flags.”
The
release marks the latest setback for Trump, who has been mired in
investigations, including federal and state inquiries into his efforts
to overturn the 2020 election. The Department of Justice also has been
investigating reams of classified documents found at his Mar-a-Lago club
and possible efforts to obstruct the investigation.
In a statement Friday, Trump lashed out at Democrats and the Supreme Court for the release.
“It’s
going to lead to horrible things for so many people,” he said. “The
radical, left Democrats have weaponized everything, but remember, that
is a dangerous two-way street!”
He
said the returns demonstrated “how proudly successful I have been and
how I have been able to use depreciation and various other tax
deductions” to build his businesses.
The returns were released by the House Ways and Means Committee, which held a party-line vote last week to make the returns public after years of legal wrangling.
The
returns detail how Trump used tax law to minimize his liability,
including carrying forward massive losses from previous years. Trump
said during his 2016 campaign that paying little or no income tax in
some years “makes me smart.”
In
2020, more than 150 of Trump’s business entities listed negative
qualified business income, which the IRS defines as “the net amount of
qualified items of income, gain, deduction and loss from any qualified
trade or business.” In total for that tax year, combined with nearly $9
million in carryforward loss from previous years, Trump’s qualified
losses amounted to more than $58 million.
Another
of Trump’s money losers: the ice rink his company operated until last
year in New York City’s Central Park. Trump reported a total of $2.6
million in losses from Wollman Rink over the six years made public. The
rink, an early Trump Organization jewel run through a contract with New
York City’s government, reported a loss of $1.3 million in 2015 despite
taking in $9.3 million in revenue, according to the tax returns. The
rink turned a $298,000 profit in 2016, but was back to melting cash in
each of the next four years.
“Trump
seems to be creating huge losses that are suspicious or questionable
under current law,” said Steven Rosenthal, a senior fellow at the
Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, who said he had spent 20 years
preparing taxes for corporations and wealthy individuals and “never saw
anyone lose money as regularly and as large as Trump lost money year
after year.”
“To
me, Trump’s business operations were phenomenally unsuccessful and I
struggle to figure out how much of it is attributable to Trump’s
unluckiness as a businessman and how much of it is attributable to
Trump’s inflation,” he said.
Aspects
of Trump’s finances had been shrouded in mystery since his days as an
up-and-coming Manhattan real estate developer in the 1980s.
Trump,
known for building skyscrapers and hosting a reality TV show before
winning the White House, did offer limited details about his holdings
and income on mandatory disclosure forms and financial statements he
provided to banks to secure loans and to financial magazines to justify
his ranking on lists of billionaires.
Trump’s longtime accounting firm has since disavowed the statements, and New York’s attorney general has filed a lawsuit
alleging Trump and his Trump Organization fraudulently inflated asset
values on the statements. Trump and his company have denied wrongdoing.
In
October 2018, The New York Times published a Pulitzer Prize-winning
series based on leaked tax records that contradicted the image Trump had
tried to sell of himself as a self-made businessman. It showed that
Trump received a modern-day equivalent of at least $413 million from his
father’s real estate holdings, with much of that money coming from what
the Times called “tax dodges” in the 1990s.
A
second series in 2020 showed that Trump paid no income taxes at all in
10 of the previous 15 years because he generally lost more money than he
made.
The
IRS only began to audit Trump’s 2016 tax filings on April 3, 2019 —
more than two years into his presidency — when the Ways and Means
chairman, Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., asked the agency for information
related to the returns.
Every
president and major-party candidate since Richard Nixon has voluntarily
made at least summaries of their tax information available to the
public.
___
Associated
Press writers Gary Fields, Paul Wiseman and Farnoush Amiri in
Washington, Meg Kinnard in Columbia, South Carolina, and Nicholas
Riccardi in Denver contributed to this report.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
The twice impeached, disgraced former president, who led an attempted coup d'etat against the USA, From FUCKING LAST NIGHT
11:47 p.m.:
Wow! Has anyone seen the Ruby Freeman 'contradictions' of her sworn testimony? Now this is 'BIG STUFF.'Look what was captured by Cobb County police body cameras on January 4, 2021. 'And everything they are saying is false. Everything from the quote unquote SUITCASES OF THE BALLOT BOXES, TO THE WHY WE OPENED THEM BACK UP. EVERYTHING THEY SAID WAS FALSE.THE FBI…REACHED OUT TO ME ONLY TO CLEAR MY SOCIAL MEDIA (evidence tampering?)…COUNT WAS LOW, IT WAS REALLY LOW.' Now it gets really bad,TRUTH 2
12:07 a.m.:
Ruby Freeman, page 2: 'BOOM under the table. Cut the zip ties to scan them so the number would go up…so that’s how the number was CREATED, by the ballots going through the scanner…I do want an attorney. IT’S ALL A FRAUD. EVERYTHING THEY ARE SAYING IS FALSE. FROM THE SUITCASES OF THE BALLOT BOXES, TO WHY WE OPENED THEM BACK UP. EVERYTHING THEY SAID WAS FALSE.' They got Ruby 7 top D.C. lawyers and protection from the FBI (Again?). WHY? She then 'changed' her statements - LIED? TROUBLE FOR RUBY!!!
12:29 a.m.:
What will the Great State of Georgia do with the Ruby Freeman MESS? Why not just tell the TRUTH, get rid of the turmoil and guilt, and take our Country back from the evils and treachery of the Radical Left monsters who want to see America die? MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
The twice impeached, disgraced former president, who led an attempted coup d'etat against the USA, From FUCKING LAST NIGHT
11:47 p.m.:
Wow! Has anyone seen the Ruby Freeman 'contradictions' of her sworn testimony? Now this is 'BIG STUFF.'Look what was captured by Cobb County police body cameras on January 4, 2021. 'And everything they are saying is false. Everything from the quote unquote SUITCASES OF THE BALLOT BOXES, TO THE WHY WE OPENED THEM BACK UP. EVERYTHING THEY SAID WAS FALSE.THE FBI…REACHED OUT TO ME ONLY TO CLEAR MY SOCIAL MEDIA (evidence tampering?)…COUNT WAS LOW, IT WAS REALLY LOW.' Now it gets really bad,TRUTH 2
12:07 a.m.:
Ruby Freeman, page 2: 'BOOM under the table. Cut the zip ties to scan them so the number would go up…so that’s how the number was CREATED, by the ballots going through the scanner…I do want an attorney. IT’S ALL A FRAUD. EVERYTHING THEY ARE SAYING IS FALSE. FROM THE SUITCASES OF THE BALLOT BOXES, TO WHY WE OPENED THEM BACK UP. EVERYTHING THEY SAID WAS FALSE.' They got Ruby 7 top D.C. lawyers and protection from the FBI (Again?). WHY? She then 'changed' her statements - LIED? TROUBLE FOR RUBY!!!
12:29 a.m.:
What will the Great State of Georgia do with the Ruby Freeman MESS? Why not just tell the TRUTH, get rid of the turmoil and guilt, and take our Country back from the evils and treachery of the Radical Left monsters who want to see America die? MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
Time for butterfly nets and straight jackets or a Nobel?
Comments
The bigger reveal is that his businesses lose a shitload of money. These are not the type of losses that are solely related to taking advantage of the tax code (i.e. depreciation of real estate costs, etc.) as the losses are way too fucking big.
He is basically inflating the values of his properties, which allows for more borrowing on lines of credit, and spending it.
As I mentioned before...I'm curious as to why his interest income is growing so much. He has very little dividend income which is very strange as a billionaire. I have clients that just don't like the stock market and would rather invest their money in land/real estate, etc, but someone who claims to be a billionaire would certainly have more investment income than that.
I'm not sure if his returns will reveal the true source of that interest income but my guess is that it relates to contract sales from maybe Saudi and/or Russian sources.
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago
2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy
2013: London ON, Chicago; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE)
2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston
2020: Oakland, Oakland: 2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana
2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana
LOL....his kids pay him interest
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago
2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy
2013: London ON, Chicago; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE)
2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston
2020: Oakland, Oakland: 2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana
2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago
2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy
2013: London ON, Chicago; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE)
2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston
2020: Oakland, Oakland: 2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana
2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana
All those shitty books and he only received royalties of $133K? With 33% going to the "Book Writer"
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago
2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy
2013: London ON, Chicago; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE)
2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston
2020: Oakland, Oakland: 2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana
2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana
There are no kings inside the gates of eden
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
A $14,277 penalty? Great planning....and don't you think that tRump must have signed for Melania? lol...even the date is the same handwriting
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago
2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy
2013: London ON, Chicago; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE)
2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston
2020: Oakland, Oakland: 2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana
2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
I looked this up...that is very likely her signature. Some reporter had dug into it a few years back and said that Melania had been trained to sign her name like that. She crosses the T which matches other signatures of hers. Very odd but that makes sense.
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago
2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy
2013: London ON, Chicago; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE)
2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston
2020: Oakland, Oakland: 2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana
2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana
just kidding.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
fuckstick is a control freak.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
once again...
After January 6th 2021, he filed a US Tax return to the IRS for the year 2020, where he claimed a refund of 5.47 million dollars.
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
media is dishonest. and people are saying.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
and he did it with our money. Smart.
Go to script for decades
There are no kings inside the gates of eden
Is this a reflection on trump or our tax laws? Did he do anything wrong? Or are our tax laws trash?
can reasonably guarantee he was using the same item(s) for deductions across several of his companies..... Would seem to require a dedicated team of auditors for just the fuckstick org alone.....
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
There are no kings inside the gates of eden
Trump’s returns shed light on tax offsets, foreign accounts
Democrats in Congress released thousands of pages of former President Donald Trump’s tax returns Friday, providing the most detailed picture to date of his finances over a six-year period, including his time in the White House, when he fought to keep the information private in a break with decades of precedent.
The documents include individual returns from Trump and his wife, Melania, along with Trump’s business entities from 2015-2020. They show how Trump used the tax code to lower his tax obligation and reveal details about foreign accounts, charitable contributions and the performance of some of his highest-profile business ventures, which had largely remained shielded from public scrutiny.
The disclosure marks the culmination of a yearslong legal fight that has played out everywhere from the presidential campaign to Congress and the Supreme Court as Trump persistently rejected efforts to share details about his financial history — counter to the practice of transparency followed by all his predecessors in the post-Watergate era. The records release comes just days before Republicans retake control of the House and weeks after Trump announced another campaign for the White House.
The records show how Trump limited his tax liability by offsetting his income against corporate losses as well as millions of dollars in business expenses, asset depreciation and other deductions.
While Trump paid $641,931 in federal income taxes in 2015, the year he began his campaign for president, he paid just $750 in 2016 and 2017, according to a report released last week by Congress’ nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation. He paid nearly $1 million in 2018, but only $133,445 in 2019 and nothing in 2020, the year he unsuccessfully sought reelection.
The records also detail Trump’s foreign holdings.
Trump, according to the filings, reported having bank accounts in China, Ireland and the United Kingdom in 2015 through 2017, even as he was commander in chief. Starting in 2018, however, he only reported an account in the U.K. The returns also show that Trump claimed foreign tax credits for taxes he paid on various business ventures around the world, including licensing arrangements for use of his name on development projects and his golf courses in Scotland and Ireland.
In several years, Trump appears to have paid more in foreign taxes than he did in net U.S. federal income taxes, with income reported in countries including Azerbaijan, China, India, Indonesia, Panama, the Philippines, St. Martin, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.
The documents also show that Trump’s charitable donations often represented only a sliver of his income. In 2020, the year the coronavirus ravaged the economy, Trump reported no charitable donations at all. In 2019 and 2018 he reported writing checks for about $500,000 in donations. In earlier years the numbers were higher — $1.8 million in 2017 and $1.1 million in 2016.
It’s unclear whether the reported sums included Trump’s $400,000 annual presidential salary, which he had said, as a candidate, that he would forgo and which he claimed he donated to various federal departments.
Jeff Hoopes, an accounting professor at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, described Trump’s returns as “large and complicated” with “hundreds of entities scattered all over the globe.”
He noted that many of those entities are slightly unprofitable, which he described as “pretty magical as far as the tax code.”
“It’s hard to know if someone’s really bad at business or really good at tax planning, because they both look like the same thing,” he said.
Daniel Shaviro, a taxation professor at New York University, cited the large financial losses from so many of Trump’s businesses, despite their often healthy sales, as something that should raise suspicions from auditors. “There’s fishy looking stuff here.”
Shaviro also cited examples of suspicious or sloppy math even in smaller businesses, such as an aviation firm dubbed “DT Endeavor I LLC,” which in 2020 reported both sales and expenses of $160,144. Such exact matches are unusual, Shaviro said. Yet the form also reported an $18,923 loss.
“The return doesn’t say, ‘Guess what? I’m committing fraud,’” Shaviro said, “but there are red flags.”
The release marks the latest setback for Trump, who has been mired in investigations, including federal and state inquiries into his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The Department of Justice also has been investigating reams of classified documents found at his Mar-a-Lago club and possible efforts to obstruct the investigation.
In a statement Friday, Trump lashed out at Democrats and the Supreme Court for the release.
“It’s going to lead to horrible things for so many people,” he said. “The radical, left Democrats have weaponized everything, but remember, that is a dangerous two-way street!”
He said the returns demonstrated “how proudly successful I have been and how I have been able to use depreciation and various other tax deductions” to build his businesses.
The returns were released by the House Ways and Means Committee, which held a party-line vote last week to make the returns public after years of legal wrangling.
The returns detail how Trump used tax law to minimize his liability, including carrying forward massive losses from previous years. Trump said during his 2016 campaign that paying little or no income tax in some years “makes me smart.”
In 2020, more than 150 of Trump’s business entities listed negative qualified business income, which the IRS defines as “the net amount of qualified items of income, gain, deduction and loss from any qualified trade or business.” In total for that tax year, combined with nearly $9 million in carryforward loss from previous years, Trump’s qualified losses amounted to more than $58 million.
Another of Trump’s money losers: the ice rink his company operated until last year in New York City’s Central Park. Trump reported a total of $2.6 million in losses from Wollman Rink over the six years made public. The rink, an early Trump Organization jewel run through a contract with New York City’s government, reported a loss of $1.3 million in 2015 despite taking in $9.3 million in revenue, according to the tax returns. The rink turned a $298,000 profit in 2016, but was back to melting cash in each of the next four years.
“Trump seems to be creating huge losses that are suspicious or questionable under current law,” said Steven Rosenthal, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, who said he had spent 20 years preparing taxes for corporations and wealthy individuals and “never saw anyone lose money as regularly and as large as Trump lost money year after year.”
“To me, Trump’s business operations were phenomenally unsuccessful and I struggle to figure out how much of it is attributable to Trump’s unluckiness as a businessman and how much of it is attributable to Trump’s inflation,” he said.
Aspects of Trump’s finances had been shrouded in mystery since his days as an up-and-coming Manhattan real estate developer in the 1980s.
Trump, known for building skyscrapers and hosting a reality TV show before winning the White House, did offer limited details about his holdings and income on mandatory disclosure forms and financial statements he provided to banks to secure loans and to financial magazines to justify his ranking on lists of billionaires.
Trump’s longtime accounting firm has since disavowed the statements, and New York’s attorney general has filed a lawsuit alleging Trump and his Trump Organization fraudulently inflated asset values on the statements. Trump and his company have denied wrongdoing.
In October 2018, The New York Times published a Pulitzer Prize-winning series based on leaked tax records that contradicted the image Trump had tried to sell of himself as a self-made businessman. It showed that Trump received a modern-day equivalent of at least $413 million from his father’s real estate holdings, with much of that money coming from what the Times called “tax dodges” in the 1990s.
A second series in 2020 showed that Trump paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years because he generally lost more money than he made.
In its report last week, the Ways and Means Committee indicated the Trump administration may have disregarded a requirement mandating audits of a president’s tax filings.
The IRS only began to audit Trump’s 2016 tax filings on April 3, 2019 — more than two years into his presidency — when the Ways and Means chairman, Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., asked the agency for information related to the returns.
Every president and major-party candidate since Richard Nixon has voluntarily made at least summaries of their tax information available to the public.
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Associated Press writers Gary Fields, Paul Wiseman and Farnoush Amiri in Washington, Meg Kinnard in Columbia, South Carolina, and Nicholas Riccardi in Denver contributed to this report.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
It's far past time to arrest some MF'ers.
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©