"It's a Hoax", says Trump About His Tax Records...

[Joe Guy]

Trump's Taxes Show Chronic Losses and Years of Income Tax Avoidance

Donald Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes the year he won the presidency. In his first year in the White House, he paid another $750.

He had paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years — largely because he reported losing much more money than he made.

Full story here.

[dales]

I shocked, SHOCKED.....I tell you!

[Bicycle Bill]

SEVEN HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS?????
Jesus H. Christ on a pony, I paid more than that in FICA contributions!!!

But I guess that's because I'm not a stable genius or a businessman who's declared bankruptcy a half-dozen times.

And people can still support this mother-fukker?

-"BB"-

[Gob]

It's the American dream....

[MajGenl.Meade]

[ex-khobar Andy]

Yes - as he told us in 2016, that just means he's smart.

[Sue U]

What is hilarious is that Trump is still going with the lie that he somehow can't show us his tax returns because they're (still!!) under audit -- which has exactly fuck-all to do with whether he can release them. And the NYT apparently has his tax data for the last 20 years, so that cat's out of the bag anyway; there's nothing even remotely "confidential" about any of it anymore, even if that were a legitimate basis (and of course, it's not) for not releasing his tax information during the 2016 campaign -- or any time thereafter.

Certainly it's no surprise to anyone that Trump is a liar, a fraud and a tax cheat. What the country needs to learn from this episode is exactly how rigged this game is -- how it is so specifically designed to advantage the rich and large corporations, making them even richer literally at the expense of everyone else. What kind of system lets Donald Trump pay nothing in federal income taxes while ordinary working people bear all the costs? Does Donald Trump have no income? (That seems unlikely, given how much he charges the government for room rentals and golf carts on his golf outings alone.)

There are several judgments that can be made from this story: 1) Trump is a criminal who should be imprisoned for tax fraud; 2) if he used the "loopholes" available to pay no taxes, the tax system is corrupted as well; and 3) there is absolutely no reason that both these things cannot be true.

[eddieq]

But.....he donates his salary

[ex-khobar Andy]

What Sue said. I've said before that I think that the most appalling thing about Trump's 2016 'victory' was that half the country's voters - give or take - thought that even with what we knew then, he was a good pick for President. In the same way we learn here that Trump pays F all tax - well we knew that - but that for years and years his personal excesses have been all over the newspapers and no-one at the IRS has wondered how he does it. Of course the IRS is routinely derided as unjust so they get defunded. They were scared after the apparent focus on tea party groups a few years ago. Well if you are running a 'charity' for which the reason for your existence is to get people to not pay tax (I don't know about tax but my syntax has gone all to hell during this sentence) it to me is not surprising that the IRS should take an interest.

So in the same way, the most appalling thing about this is not that Trump has probably got away with certainly many millions and maybe billions in tax, but that the IRS has apparently allowed this to continue for years. How many others? *

I doubt that this will convince many of his base that he was, after all, the wrong guy and they'll have to vote for the lib after all.

I made my donation today to the local Ds so I should have a Biden/Harris yard sign shortly. It will be interesting to see the effect on the neighbors. Larry across the street is a great neighbor; he will lend me any tool from his vast collection; he cuts the grass of some of his neighbors and I'm pretty sure he doesn't ask for a penny; he is always affable and friendly; and he said the other day, when the Louisville demonstrations were purportedly heading our way "Come on over - I got guns." And I've never asked him, but I'm pretty sure he's a Trump voter. He looks after his 90-something and deaf mother. He's not a bad guy and I can't hate him. Maybe the sign will start a conversation.

* And don't you wonder, when you see these TV ads - "I owed the IRS $102,000 and Assholes-R-Us settled my debt for $2000!" - how the hell did they owe that much in the first place? AFAIK to owe that much you need income of $300,000 or so. The implication is not that it was a mistake or a miscalculation in a return or at IRS - it really was owed but somehow they managed to keep the cash. I want to know the rest of the story.

[TPFKA@W]

Maybe the sign will start a conversation.

* And don't you wonder, when you see these TV ads - "I owed the IRS $102,000 and Assholes-R-Us settled my debt for $2000!" - how the hell did they owe that much in the first place? AFAIK to owe that much you need income of $300,000 or so. The implication is not that it was a mistake or a miscalculation in a return or at IRS - it really was owed but somehow they managed to keep the cash. I want to know the rest of the story.

You might have to start buying your own tools.

I work with a nurse who has said she and her husband owe, and this was a could of years ago so she may owe more, $30,000 in back taxes. Since I once worked with a nurse who could not renew her nursing license until she paid $25K in back taxes she owed, I tried conveying this to the other one that this could have an impact on her license if she does not pay the taxes. She and her husband together owe $200K in student loans. Both of these debts will follow one to the grave. She just took a trip to Vegas with her financially equally irresponsible husband. Taxman and student loan man comes for the little people first.

[Bicycle Bill]

* And don't you wonder, when you see these TV ads - "I owed the IRS $102,000 and Assholes-R-Us settled my debt for $2000!" - how the hell did they owe that much in the first place? AFAIK to owe that much you need income of $300,000 or so. The implication is not that it was a mistake or a miscalculation in a return or at IRS - it really was owed but somehow they managed to keep the cash. I want to know the rest of the story.

I see this sort of thing frequently in my job as a cellular service rep.  Someone gets behind; there are late fees and penalties for disconnection/reconnection charges; and if their phones are on a lease or installment billing payoff and their account is closed, the remaining cost of the phones gets added to this bill, and what started out as maybe $400-$500 in the hole is quickly up to two or three thousand dollars.  So I'm thinking much of the initial figure these "tax relief specialists" keep referring to might be interest and penalties.
(it could also reflect multiple years of underpayments or disallowed deductions, too)

And since even the IRS realizes that even 10 or 20% of something is better than zero percent of everything, they are willing to settle for maybe what was initially owed and absorb or dismiss the interest and penalties.  Of course, your name and SSN or tax ID probably goes into a special book of "naughty boys and girls" as well, and your next few returns will be subject to 'special attention' from a staff of highly-skilled and extremely nit-picky experts.

-"BB"-

[Sue U]

In the same way we learn here that Trump pays F all tax - well we knew that - but that for years and years his personal excesses have been all over the newspapers and no-one at the IRS has wondered how he does it.

In broad strokes, from what I understand of the reporting so far, Trump is essentially kiting checks but using real estate loans in place of bank drafts, skimming cash off the top, stiffing contractors and lienholders along the way in "renegotiating" the debt, and using the bankruptcy court to bail him out when his creditors won't put up with his bullshit anymore. This allows him to live off the hundreds of millions in loans -- charging off his upkeep as a "business expense"-- while showing losses on the "business" (that business being scamming lenders). My guess is that because legitimate banks stopped doing business with him years ago, he's still running the same operation, but now with foreign money that needs laundering. Russian oligarchs and third-world dictators are less fussy about Trump's skimming since it's the price of getting reasonably clean-looking American dollars -- and having their hooks in the American president has been a tremendous bonus.

[Econoline]

Yesterday: “It's a hoax. It's completely made up.”
Today: “They illegally got those records.”

And I'm not the first to point this out, but it's worth repeating: if the New York Times got the story wrong he could easily prove it false by releasing his tax returns, by making them public.

[Econoline]

An oldie-but-goodie from 2016...

[Sue U]

So as Liz Dye taxsplained on the Wonkettes, Trump's tax dodge was based on continually claiming losses on deals that were more bigly than the money brought in on others, in a kind of reverse Ponzi scheme, which all went sideways when he actually made a pile of money from The Apprentice and got into a fight with the government over a $72 million tax refund he had claimed. Which makes this whole story basically just The Producers but set in a real estate office, with The Apprentice playing the role of Springtime for Hitler, which is really too on-the-nose.

I swear, the writing for this season of America just gets worse and worse.