piscator wrote:...Didn't Pay A Cent
The last time information from Donald Trump’s income-tax returns was made public, the bottom line was striking: He had paid the federal government $0 in income taxes.
The disclosure, in a 1981 report by New Jersey gambling regulators, revealed that the wealthy Manhattan investor had for at least two years in the late 1970s taken advantage of a tax-code provision popular with developers that allowed him to report negative income.
Good. He paid $0 in taxes in the 1970s (40 years ago) under a provision of the tax code that allowed him to lawfully do so. Would you elect a person to the Presidency who was too stupid to do so?
Today, as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Trump regularly denounces corporate executives for using loopholes and “false deductions” to “get away with murder” when it comes to avoiding taxes.
"false deductions" = tax EVASION, not "avoidance." Tax "avoidance" is perfectly legal. Tax evasion is illegal. Taking a false deduction is fraud.
“They make a fortune. They pay no tax,” Trump said last year on CBS. “It’s ridiculous, okay?”
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Indeed. He correctly identifies unfairness in the tax code. If the tax code were written so you would pay no tax, wouldn't you pay no tax? I certainly would. I could still identify the code as being unfair. The question is, why didn't the party in power for the last 7 1/2 years do anything about it? Either Trump is wrong, and it's not unfair, or Trump is right and it is unfair and in 7 1/2 years the Obama administration didn't bother changing the Internal Revenue Code or the Revenue Regulations.
Trump’s personal taxes are a mystery. He has refused to release any recent returns, meaning the public cannot see how much money he makes, how much he gives to charity and how aggressively he uses deductions, shelters and other tactics to shrink his tax bill.
Not a big deal. Trump runs a number of business enterprises. His personal tax returns probably don't illustrate a billionaire, because C Corporations owned by Trump file their own tax returns, and Trump's individual tax return will only reflect income drawn from those enterprises.
His charitable giving would not generally be reflected in his individual tax return, because he sets up independent charitable foundations. "Aggressive" deductions? Either an expense is deductible or it isn't. If he lied, he'd be hit with an IRS audit. And, everyone expects him to take as many deductions as possible. There is nothing wrong with doing so. And, tax shelters won't be reflected on his individual tax return. That's why it's a shelter (like an off-shore trust).
Trump, who said last week on ABC that his tax rate is “none of your business,” would be the first major-party nominee in 40 years to not release his returns.
In an interview this week, Trump said that he has paid “substantial” taxes but declined to provide specifics.
He reiterated that he fights “very hard to pay as little tax as possible.”
“One of the reasons is because the government takes your money and wastes it in the Middle East and all over the place,” he said.
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Trump’s contradictory approaches have been apparent for years.
Contradictory? There was nothing contradictory about the above.
He criticized 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney for delaying the release of his returns. Romney, a former private-equity executive, had come under fire for paying a low tax rate because most of his income came from investments.
“It’s a great thing when you can show that you’ve been successful and that you’ve made a lot of money,” Trump said at the time.
Romney eventually released returns showing that, for his 2011 taxes, he chose not to take certain deductions, bringing his tax rate more in line with that of average Americans.
Trump, early in his campaign, seemed ready to give voters a look at his tax filings.
In January, he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he was ready to disclose his “very big . . . very beautiful” returns.
But as his campaign gained momentum, Trump backed away from his declaration. He first claimed that ongoing audits by the Internal Revenue Service prevent disclosure.
Then last week, he told the Associated Press that voters are not interested in seeing his tax filings and that “there’s nothing to learn from them.”
[Fact Checker: Trump’s false claim that ‘there’s nothing to learn’ from his tax returns]
Trump’s new position has unnerved some tax experts, who see value in the tradition of transparency by presidential contenders.
“At some point, he could be the tax collector in chief. He’d supervise the IRS, making sure all of us live up to our own tax responsibilities,” said Joe Thorndike, a director at Tax Analysts, a nonpartisan, nonprofit group that specializes in tax policy. “People deserve to know . . . how a person like that plays the game.”
Trump’s stance has become an issue in the campaign.
Romney said on Facebook last week that refusing to release tax returns should be “disqualifying” for any nominee and speculated that Trump’s returns could be hiding a “bombshell of unusual size.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) weighed in this week, telling reporters that Trump will “have to make that decision himself” but that presidential candidates’ releasing their returns has “certainly been the pattern for quite some time.”
[Mitt Romney believes ‘there’s a bombshell in Donald Trump’s taxes’]
Trump’s likely Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, who has disclosed decades of tax returns, released a 60-second ad last week asking, “What’s Donald Trump hiding?”
“You’ve got to ask yourself: ‘Why doesn’t he want to release it?’ ” Clinton said at a New Jersey rally last week. “Yeah, well, we’re gonna find out.”
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... story.html[/quote]
Yep. And, Trump, not being an idiot, has known since before he started running for President that the tax return issue would be a question asked, and that controversy would be created by a delay in releasing them. Watch what happens when he releases them.
“When I was in college, I took a terrorism class. ... The thing that was interesting in the class was every time the professor said ‘Al Qaeda’ his shoulders went up, But you know, it is that you don’t say ‘America’ with an intensity, you don’t say ‘England’ with the intensity. You don’t say ‘the army’ with the intensity,” she continued. “... But you say these names [Al Qaeda] because you want that word to carry weight. You want it to be something.” - Ilhan Omar
