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Adversity temporarily visits a strong man but stays with the weak for a lifetime.Comment
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Re: Let the truth be known
New York Times: Trump paid no income taxes in 10 out of 15 years beginning in 2000
Donald Trump paid no federal income taxes whatsoever in 10 out of 15 years beginning in 2000 because he reported losing significantly more than he made, according to an explosive report released Sunday by the New York Times.
The President paid just $750 in federal income taxes in both the year he won the presidency and his first year in the White House, according to more than two decades of his tax information obtained by The Times.
At a White House briefing Sunday, Trump denied the New York Times story and said he pays "a lot" in federal income taxes. "I pay a lot, and I pay a lot in state income taxes," he said.
Trump added that he is willing to release his tax returns once he is no longer under audit by the Internal Revenue Service, which he said "treats me badly." The President is under no obligation to hold his tax returns while under audit, but has been saying that for years. The President repeatedly refused to answer how much he has paid in federal taxes in the briefing and walked out to shouted questions from CNN's Jeremy Diamond on the topic.
The expansive Times report paints a picture of businessman who was struggling to keep his businesses afloat and was reporting millions in losses even as he was campaigning for President and boasting about his financial success.
According to the newspaper, Trump used the $427.4 million he was paid for "The Apprentice" to fund his other businesses, mostly his golf courses, and was putting more cash into his businesses than he was taking out.
The tax information obtained by the Times also reveals Trump has been fighting the IRS for years over whether losses he claimed should have resulted in a nearly $73 million refund.
In response to a letter summarizing the newspaper's findings, Trump Organization lawyer Alan Garten told the Times that "most, if not all, of the facts appear to be inaccurate" and requested the documents.
The New York Times said it will not make Trump's tax-return data public so as not to jeopardize its sources "who have taken enormous personal risks to help inform the public."
The tax-return data obtained by the newspaper does not include his personal returns for 2018 or 2019.
Trump's taxes have been largely a mystery since he first ran for office.
During the 2016 campaign, the then-candidate broke with presidential election norms and refused to produce his tax returns for public review. They have remained private since he took office.
Being under audit by the IRS does not preclude someone from releasing their tax returns publicly. But that hasn't stopped Trump from using it as a defense against releasing his financial information.
In 2016, Trump released a letter from his tax attorneys that confirmed he was under audit. But the letter also said the IRS finished reviewing Trump's taxes from 2002 through 2008. Trump did not release his tax returns from those years, even though the audits were over.
Additionally, the Times reported Sunday that Trump's tax information reveals specific examples of the potential conflicts of interests between the President's business with his position.
The President has collected an additional $5 million a year at Mar-a-Lago since 2015 from new members. A roofing material manufacturer GAF spent at least $1.5 million in 2018 at Trump's Doral golf course near Miami while its industry was lobbying the government to roll back federal regulations, according to the Times.
It also found that Billy Graham Evangelistic Association paid more than $397,000 to Trump's Washington, DC, hotel in 2017.
The Times reported that in Trump's first two years in office, he has collected $73 million in revenue overseas, with much of that coming from his golf courses but some coming from licensing deals in countries, including the Philippines, India and Turkey.
The Times said all of the information obtained was "provided by sources with legal access to it."
A previous New York Times investigation published in 2018 reported that Trump had helped "his parents dodge taxes" in the 1990s, including "instances of outright fraud" that allowed him to amass a fortune from them
Trump received at least $413 million in today's dollars from his father's real estate empire, starting at the age of 3.
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Re: Let the truth be known
We now know what Trump was trying to hide by holding back his tax returns
The New York Times’ major new story reveals that Trump had political, legal, and financial reasons to hold the returns back.
One of the biggest secrets in American politics — what’s in the tax returns that President Donald Trump has refused to release for so long — has at last been revealed, by the New York Times.
Times journalists Russ Buettner, Susanne Craig, and Mike McIntire obtained “tax-return data extending over more than two decades” related to the president, and have revealed their findings in a bombshell new report. (They are not posting the documents themselves, to avoid jeopardizing their sources.)
For years, the political world has speculated on just what Trump was trying to hide by holding back his returns, and by falsely claiming that he can’t release them until the IRS finishes an extended audit. Was it that he paid no income taxes at all in some years? Was it that he was far less successful of a businessman than he let on? Was he claiming legally dubious deductions?
The answer, it turns out, is all of the above.
The Times story makes clear the supposedly wealthy president often paid no income taxes, while his businesses regularly lost vast sums of money, and he himself was on the hook for increasing sums in loans. All that is politically damaging enough to Trump’s image, and likely a sufficient reason to work hard to keep the tax returns secret.
But there’s likely another reason behind Trump’s reticence — because reporters would scour his returns for legally dubious claims, and put the pieces together as to how he was trying to snooker the IRS.
That’s just what ended up happening here. Just to name one example, Buettner, Craig, and McIntire sussed out that mysterious write-offs for consulting fees on certain Trump projects matched the amounts of payments to Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump. And there’s far more in the Times’ excellent piece.
One major theme of the Times piece is that the IRS audit of Trump is extremely serious, and that he could end up owing the US government more than $100 million. So reporters’ scrutiny of his tax returns might not just be politically problematic for Trump — they could also be financially and legally problematic.
The tax returns reveal that Trump paid little taxes, that his businesses lose lots of money, and that he’s deeply in debt — none of which looks good politically
Back when Trump first ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, he came under an enormous amount of criticism from his rivals for not releasing his tax returns, as past presidential nominees have. Initially, he had promised that he would release them. But he kept making excuses, his main one being the false claim he could not yet release the returns because he is under audit.
So Trump’s tax returns became the white whale of his critics, with everyone from reporters to House Democrats to New York state prosecutors trying to get ahold of them.
After more than four years, Buettner, Craig, and McIntire of the Times got the goods.
Their story reveals the following: Trump did indeed pay zero in income taxes from 2011-2014, and the paltry amount of $750 in 2016 and 2017. He pulled this off by claiming that his businesses lost massive amounts of money. He has $421 million in debt coming due in the next few years, and he could owe $100 million more to the US government if he loses his audit battle with the IRS.
There are ample political reasons in here for Trump to have been so reluctant to release these tax returns.
For one, there’s the fact that he paid so little income taxes, which will look bad from the perspective of many Americans who paid much more in taxes than he has. You might wonder why Trump would care about this given his long-standing ability to wriggle free of political scandals — but that ability wasn’t so clear in 2016, when he first started holding back the returns. Additionally, Trump’s first campaign came just a few years after Mitt Romney was dogged by then-Sen. Harry Reid’s false allegation that Romney had paid no taxes for ten years. The political conventional wisdom was that a wealthy candidate having paid little to nothing in taxes would be punished electorally.
But the specific reason Trump paid no taxes is embarrassing — it’s because his businesses lost tons of money. (At least, that’s what he claims — keep in mind that the tax return information is his representation of his businesses to the IRS.)
To be clear, some parts of Trump’s business really do make money — for instance, The Apprentice sent cash pouring in, and Trump Tower is profitable. But he avoids paying taxes on these profits because he’s claimed such massive losses from other parts of his business empire.
Trump may also have held back the returns to avoid legal and financial jeopardy
The other big reason Trump was probably reluctant to release the returns is that there’s clearly some legally questionable stuff in there.
For instance, the records obtained by Buettner, Craig, and McIntire show that Trump wrote off $26 million in supposed consulting fees as a business expense between 2011 and 2018. But the reporters took the added step of uncovering where some of that money was going — and they figured out that some of those write-offs matched payments to Trump’s daughter Ivanka, as revealed on her own financial disclosure forms.
Now, Ivanka was an executive vice president of the Trump Organization — not some outside consultant. And sources told the Times that there were no outside consultants involved in certain of the projects for which Trump’s businesses wrote-off consulting fees.
The Times story also mentions other questionable practices — Trump dubbed a Westchester, New York mansion an “investment property” so he could write-off property taxes on it, but Eric Trump called it “our compound.” The Trump Organization also wrote off Donald Trump Jr.’s legal fees for the lawyer who represented Don Jr. in the Russia investigation.
This is probably just scratching the surface — the Times reporters say they have more stories coming. But the larger point is that Trump has a history of questionable tax practices, is facing an audit where he has a lot on the line, and appears to be in a financial situation in which having reporters closely scrutinize his tax returns can only be a problem for him.Comment
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Re: Let the truth be known
If Democrats are dropping like flies how do you explain the Republican rout in 2018 in Congress?
I will give you a hint, most US citizens are desperate to remove Trump from office.
The Republican party has ceased to be and is now only an illogical cult like following of a badly corrupted man.
President Obama has been out of office for 3.5 years. He has not been indicted nor charged with any crime. The Republicans have had more than enough time and resources to launch any legal actions. So this claim that Obama was guilty of any legal crime is a nothing burger.Last edited by SalesServiceGuy; 09-28-2020, 01:35 PM.Comment
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Re: Let the truth be known
A driver accused of attempted murder for driving a car into a crowd of Trump supporters in southern California and severely injuring two people has been revealed to be Tatiana Rita Turner, a major Black Lives Matter organizer.Adversity temporarily visits a strong man but stays with the weak for a lifetime.Comment
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Re: Let the truth be known
He voted for the auto industry bail out. So did McCain and a lot of other Senators. But can you provide us with anything important that he ever authored?Comment
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Re: Let the truth be known
The truth is that no one won the popular vote. That requires 50% + 1 vote. There were three other parties on most state ballots. The candidates for all three were liberals. The people who voted for those candidates did so because even they did not want Hillary. The reason for the Electoral College is for when there are more than 2 candidates and no one gets a clear majority.Comment
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Re: Let the truth be known
https://djhjmedia.com/kari/video-project-veritas-exposes-ilhan-omars-connections-to-ballot-harvesting/Adversity temporarily visits a strong man but stays with the weak for a lifetime.Comment
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