Trump’s Taxes Show Chronic Losses and Years of Income Tax Avoidance
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Get these journos some capacity planners and SREs.
If that’s the standard then I’m sure it’d be fine for an intern at Joe Biden’s doctors office to leak his full medical records right?
EDIT: I find it hilarious that this comment was immediately flagged and hidden from default view.
> Identity theft is the deliberate use of someone else's identity, usually as a method to gain a financial advantage or obtain credit and other benefits in the other person's name [..]
I don't think anyone can be impersonated based on tax documents, so I'm not sure why you would say that.
A valid journalistic act is putting forward information that the public can use to have a better picture about their environment. In my opinion this fits the definition pretty well.
One must to keep in mind that cognitive bias has us parsing those we dislike quite literally, while giving those we fancy a pass.
And that's true in all 57 states.
A substantial chunk of voters appear disdainful of meticulously courteous but otherwise objectionable leaders.
I didn't care for Bush43's speeches, but Trump makes W seem a rhetorical genius.
Past law and facts, it all appears innuendo.
He was pressed by a reporter after that and he doubled and tripled down on what he said. That's not really what someone who was joking would do.
It’s amazing how people try to reposition history and how effective it is when they do it because the facts are clear and on video.
One could argue that holders of a public offices should be exempt of having their privacy protected, but I think it would lead to candidates that are better at hiding. The honest ones probably already lost interest in pursuing any office at that point.
I didn't downvote you and I think the smear campaign about Russian influence was a giant political scandal, no matter what you think about Trump. Somehow it is not because nobody seems to be interested in it.
I'm personally of the opinion that the full medical, criminal and financial records of any frontrunner for President should be made public by law.
Real estate can frequently show a tax loss from depreciation while generating cash flow. But depreciation only applies to improvements, and it sounds like the golf courses are a significant part of the losses. I don't know enough about golf courses to determine if depreciation is a big factor here.
So this is negative cashflow, not counting depreciation.
Unless those had some type of synergy that made his other properties and brand more valuable overall, those sound like poor investments.
You don't put a marquee property on the market if it is making money. Especially the one in DC. Especially while you are the current US president.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-organization-exploring-sa...
My business also shoes a tax loss almost every year - that's just normal good money management.
Amazon showed a tax loss literally every year ever.
EDIT: I accidentally a 'that'
Edit: and also from the thread, he owes > $1 Billion in total to lenders.
Yes, including that last one. Talk to any fundamental Christian on why.
If this happened, you don't think he'd be able to get another institution (or GOP constituent) to re-finance/backstop his debt for him?
2-300m in debt is a lot but his businesses pull in 4-500m in annual revenue. It's not a crazy debt-to-income ratio.
My only point was that it's not "easy and obvious" to "buy his debt and use it as leverage to extract political gain". There are many "outs" he can take if such an event occurred.
And I would expect covid to have decimated the value of commercial real estate, particularly hotels.
Whether or not his debts are an issue really depends on how much wealth he has to back it up.
If you have $500M in loans due, but $1B in the bank, it’s not really a problem is it?
Here’s an old report about his credit rating - note the “likely to default”:
https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/trumps-business-credit-...
Here’s an example of what it took for him to get loans in the past:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/18/business/deutsche-bank-do...
Hard to value his type of commercial real estate outside of an actual sale though.
There is no indication that he has the resources to finance the debt. Nor is there indication that he does not have those resources. We simply do not know either way until a better picture of his finances comes out.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-organization-exploring-sa...
For example the one beginning with "7/ Then we'll consider 555 California St..." shows that it has 17 replies. Where are they? How can one read them?
Cutting ties due to flavor of political leanings sounds very short sighted.
My parents are religious I am not, catholic church was actively protecting pedophiles.
Should I cut ties to my family??
Yes, so what?
I am not going to stop talking to my mom because of that. It's not like 'she' votes trump cuz hates my country or goes to church cuz she hates children.
People are idiosyncratic and act like it. We live in the world of shades of gray. Good luck living with black and white standards.
Have you ever eaten KitKat? Well you support child slavery. Have you driven volkswagen well you drive a car from ex-nazi company, Apple phone, nike shoes... I can go on and on.
I really hope you are just hotheaded teen angry with how unjust the world is, then you are justified to feel like it :)
I am not a hot headed teen. That’s an ad hominem attack meant to paint my position as childish and silly. You probably would have said the same thing before the American revolution, or the rise of Hitler.
At some point we need to draw a line between right and wrong. This is a very black and white situation. The government draws a very clear line when someone has debt that could be used to extort or manipulate them. Security clearance Ian it granted when that risk exists so you can attempt to muddy the waters and wave your hand that “morality is full of gray area” but this is not one of them.
Anyone that enables Trump after he says he won’t leave office or may run for a third term. Or support him after these financial disclosures would enable him to hold power under any circumstances and for any length of time.
My Dad has a business, and pays me a consultancy fee. I pay consultancy fees to my wife.
None of this is unusual for a family business.
Are the fees declared to the IRS and all relevant taxes paid?
No need to answer (it’s your private business), but just because petty abuses are common and rarely caught doesn’t mean they’re legitimate business practices.
You are either a consultant, or an employee.
So, you think a bank that's going to lend Trump 100 Million isn't going to examine his finances in greater detail?
> In 2003, Deutsche Bank helped Mr. Trump’s casino company sell hundreds of millions of dollars in bonds.
> Mr. Trump’s company defaulted in 2004, leaving Deutsche Bank’s clients with deep losses. The bank’s investment division that sold the bonds vowed to not do business again with Mr. Trump
> A year later, though, Mr. Trump approached another part of the investment division for a $640 million loan to build a skyscraper in Chicago. It made the loan — and in 2008, Mr. Trump defaulted and sued Deutsche Bank. That prompted the whole investment division to sever ties with Mr. Trump.
> And then, three years after his previous default, Deutsche Bank started lending to him again, this time through the private-banking division that catered to the superrich. In fact, it lent Mr. Trump money that he used to repay what he still owed Deutsche Bank’s investment division for the Chicago loan.
> In 2016, the board of directors commissioned a report into how the bank had become so enmeshed with Mr. Trump
> The report, prepared by the board’s integrity committee, concluded that Deutsche’s private-banking division, which catered to very rich individuals, was so determined to win business from big-name clients that its executives had looked past Mr. Trump’s history of stiffing his lenders
So, try this: default on your ~200k mortgage. take out another, larger mortgage with the same bank. default on that one too, and then sue the bank for damages. then get a loan from the same bank to pay back your remaining debt from the second mortgage.
I'm skeptical that you could pull this off, and yet Donald Trump somehow managed to get comparable loans from Deutsche Bank.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/18/business/deutsche-bank-do...
Loans for a house are completely different from, say, loans for a commercial high rise, smack in the middle of New York.
The fact that Trump is at least 300-400 million dollars in debt to unknown parties is a huge national security risk.
Trump specifically has a long record of lying to commercial lenders and then daring them to foreclose. This was covered in his ghost-written book. It did not make Chase Bank look wise.
TL;DR: Think “Schrödinger's Criminality”.
Otherwise, you’re really trying to solve a legal problem by social means. You’re perfectly in your right to do so, but plenty of people will disagree with you.
>No person has an obligation, legal or moral, to pay a cent more in taxes than what they owe under the tax code.
But let me ask you something. Do you believe there is zero moral obligation or simply that the current tax code is at the absolute pinnacle of moral balance?
However, at this point this sort of thing is baked in to opinions of the president. I don't think anyone is surprised.
The problem I have with the word “tax avoidance” is that it carries negative connotations (which of course the media leap on in order to attack their preferred bogeyman). In reality, all that’s happening is that people are following the law and taking advantage of loopholes and tax credits to reduce their tax obligation.
If you think these loopholes and tax credits are unfair, then focus on fixing that. If you think the tax code is so enormous that it’s hopeless to fix it, then say that and offer an alternative. Otherwise you’re not really offering people an objective measure to live by.
Haven't you noticed how over the past decade activists have started to bypass this whole democracy thing and instead legislate via Twitter mob? Plenty of people, many very influential, think we can shame our way to a better world --- their better world, of course, not yours or mine.
Do these rules exist for other people? Yes! Is he possibly only taking advantage of what others allow him to do? Sure! Is it still selfish and trivially anti-social? Yes.
If they made it legal for billionaires to steal cars off the street, it would still be shitty for them to steal cars.
"Mr. Trump’s businesses appear to have benefited from his position, and his far-flung holdings have created potential conflicts between his own financial interests and the nation’s diplomatic interests"
When you fail to collect taxes from somebody who is following the law, that is a matter for your tax code, not a moral failing of the filer.
"Any one may so arrange his affairs that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which will best pay the Treasury; there is not even a patriotic duty to increase one's taxes" (Gregory v. Helvering, 1934)
"Over and over again courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging one's affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everybody does so, rich or poor; and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands: taxes are enforced exactions, not voluntary contributions" (Commissioner v. Newman, 1947).
People can lower their taxes by buying alternative fuel vehicles, renovating historic properties, donating to charities, etc. Those laws are meant to encourage that behavior. But somebody using them to lower their taxes is engaged in tax avoidance. Is that wrong?
Many states have business tax laws that aren't as noble-minded but are meant to encourage businesses to hire people (e.g., no income tax) or operate from those states (e.g., favorable treatment of inventory). Is it wrong to take advantage of those tax laws?
In my opinion, the alternative minimum tax ( https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc556 ) is proof that the United States has given up on creating a system where tax deductions and tax credits always give a reasonable outcome.
I consider it a moral responsibility to pay back the community college and state university system, as well as the state and country that gave me access to the infrastructure and opportunity to earn that taxable income.
Things like the child tax credit aren’t really meant to encourage particular behavior, but others are. I have a 401(k) to save for retirement, but it also lowers my taxes (in my case, it lowers my future taxes). The tax break is meant to encourage me to get the 401(k). Am I a bad person for taking advantage of the tax break?
The level at which you and I are engineering this stuff is kid's play. But that's kind of the idea. If you have extensive amounts of money, you hire a team to engineer getting you out of paying your fair share, I think the average person has the right to be upset about that, since all of that profit is earned on the backs of ordinary folks.
If someone wants to disagree, fair enough, but I'd be mainly interested in hearing from folks who can't afford to hire a team to engineer their way out of paying taxes.
I’m happy to add that it’s no surprise people consider taxes when they make decisions, and in some cases tax incentives are specifically designed to change people’s behavior. It’s silly to be scandalized when their behavior actually does change. Not everybody agrees on which tax avoidance behaviors are perfectly acceptable (e.g., buying alternative fuels) and which are pure evil.
When people have a lot to lose, it’s no surprise that they hire tax experts. The US government gave up trying to design a system that always gives reasonable outcomes, and instead created the alternative minimum tax specifically for the scenario of rich people getting too creative with credits and deductions. If Trump truly received several million dollars of income in 2016 and legally paid a grand total of $750, then the alternative minimum tax isn’t doing its job and should be reworked.
They make a huge deal about the difference between Trump’s “I paid millions in total taxes” and their “he paid a tiny amount in income taxes,” and I overlooked where AMT would fit in that distinction.
The average lower-to-middle-income family with a mortgage and a couple of kids, sure they have a lot to worry about and they really need that money. Pay as little taxes as you can because what you save goes to feeding your kids, paying for college, and putting gas in the minivan.
Someone who is essentially playing a game (Trump) to maximize one number (income) while minimizing another (tax), I don't think a lot of people have a lot of sympathy for. Accumulating wealth really is a game at that point, no different than speedrunning RE2, or trying to YOLO options on Robinhood. It's not like Ivanka is putting the money into diapers, summer camp for the kids, and tires on the minivan.
In that sense, Trump doesn't have a lot to lose (anything to lose, really - just monopoly money). It's just numbers in a spreadsheet, it's not your kid's Christmas presents, or fixing the water heater, or getting a new set of tires on the family car. It's paying off Stormy Daniels who you slept with 4 months after your wife gave birth, Jared getting a fancy new tie, and your son Eric getting to go to Africa to shoot some new animal.
People are pissed. I think they have good reason to be. The system benefits those who are playing a game, and hurts those who are actually playing with real odds.
Where would the money come from to keep the company in business?
Tax avoidance is legal, and if you're overpaying, it means you're giving the government money which you could have used in the meantime. I prefer to keep my money.
Thing is though, tax avoidance in the level Trump would have done is another layer way crazier. Most people can't take theses candies, but he can. At one point losing that much money over that many year start to be too much.
It also shows that Trump is not the fantastic businessman that he has portrayed as his public persona
Which is more likely, (a) that Trump’s accountants are creative enough to get his personal tax bill to $750 without triggering the AMT, that the IRS hasn’t been able to successfully challenge the returns, and the tax experts the New York Times spoke with for this story didn’t comment on that fact, or (b) the Times story is missing key details?
His predecessors/competitors talk a big game, but they were in office for eight years; take a lucky guess whether it got easier or harder, under the Obama-Biden administration, for people in Donald Trump's business to deduct and reclassify almost all of their taxable transfers and incomes.
If there's an improper or unjustifiable deduction in these filings, then complain about that.
Nobody has any obligation, and essentially nobody has any private reason, to pay taxes that they do not owe. If you think they should owe taxes, then complain that they don't owe them, not that they won't pay what they don't owe.
The man owes hundreds of millions of dollars in personal loans that he may not be able to repay. They will come due during his second term. Given his lack of ethics it's worrying to me that a president could have that kind of leverage against him. Dangerous.
Taking on $300M against your own name is madness. What scares me the most is we needed personal returns just to figure that out. There's no way you can go into that much debt without significant foreign or less-legitimate lenders in the mix. The man's also in his mid-70s, so everyone must expect that if he dies next week, there's something they'll be able to collect from the estate. Combine that with how closely he's kept all his kids involved in his businesses and you have a man with everything to lose.
We’ve known about Deutsche Bank for quite a while now.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/18/business/trump-deutsche-b...
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/21/how-russian-money-helpe...
To quote the man himself:
Russia has never tried to use leverage over me. I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA - NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/28/us/politics/jared-kushner...
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/28/us/politics/jared-kushner...
To be clear: we absolutely should require that elected officials disclose their finances. But we shouldn't require them to be vetted through a mostly unaccountable process after they've been elected.
Security clearances can be denied for financial irresponsibility, having “significant debt” isn’t necessarily financial irresponsibility.
Will it - possibly not, on the one hand if you are supporting trump now what could possibly convince you although money is money: He's a terrible businessman, and he pays no tax. That's a huge amount of his appeal to some.
The real story is that they got leaked at all. I know there’s a huge left tile on HN so take your blue hat off for a minute and just think about this. The DNC has lusted after Trump’s returns for five years now. They finally acquired them (presumably at great expense) and published them immediately, not considering whether or not it would help their candidate. It stands to reason that they didn’t know what was in the returns if they went out of their way to obtain this nothingburger. Why publish them at all when you have the debate on Tuesday (that Trump will likely flub) that you could focus America on? Is the DNC more worried about this election than the polls show if they’re fishing like this?
Disclaimer: The polls are generally accurate IMHO. Biden has a ~75% chance to win and I agree with that. I also think “X candidate is in DEEP trouble in the polls”-type headlines help X candidate more than the opposition because higher voter turnout is triggered when voters think their votes will matter.
What about claiming they had any hand in deciding when this should be released?
I don't see any. I guess the belief that we should withhold participation in our democracy is limited to the poor.
It's up to the people.
The US Constitution is the rules, set by the people, which the Federal government must follow.
[Edit: I mean, he's complained that it's unjust and that billionaires like him should be paying their fair share.]
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161010005859/en/Tax...
Trump paid $750 total, which is not 15% of anything. He could have easily paid $0, as he did before becoming POTUS. His team picked a tiny number above zero starting in 2016 when he was elected. This is completely and totally unrelated to the capital gains tax rate.
Almost certainly, Trump used these loopholes to minimize his taxes. I assume in his case, he had a lot of losses that he was able to use to bring his over all income down well below what you or I report in a given year.
Unless Trump did something illegal (entirely possible), my point is related and not distracting.
(This is a joke, to be clear.)
He donates to charity 100% of his US government salary. I'm wondering how he even owed $750 on federal taxes.
How can HN not call BS on this? HN cries BS if someone makes a COVID claim and doesn't provide links to valid studies. Shame on you all.
HN is pretty much the only place on the web where intelligent discussion takes place. That is why I hope for every news I am interested in to be discussed here.
Reddit discussions are complete garbage. The top comment on r/news for this article is this one line: "That's $750 more than I thought he paid.". It has over 19k likes.
Yeah, ok. Sure.
...but everything I see in the article is normal tax avoidance that pretty much every family business does.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24602735
Now there is a story about Trump's taxes that is ok to discuss.
Genuine question: how is it determined what is ok to discuss on HN and what is political?
> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
On the front page at the moment I'm writing this, there are at least four more or less political articles:
- Uber secures right to continue operating in London https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24614806
- Judge temporarily blocks U.S. ban on TikTok downloads from U.S. app stores https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24611558
- French fathers will now get 28 days of paternity leave https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24610266
- Assange Trial Day 18 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24613979
The first two of these apply to "tech" companies, so you might include them in "hacking and startups" (though hardly under "intellectual curiosity"). The third is purely political and is definitely something that TV news would cover. But it visibly strikes a chord with HN's readership. The fourth is also political; Wikileaks involves email and web pages, but what doesn't nowadays?
Maybe you find that all of these should be flagged too. Maybe only the third one, I don't know. The weasel wording with "most stories" and "probably off-topic", in practice, allows these through, which is why I said that there is no (let me add: clear, explicit) rule against political submissions.
RBG: ok.
Trump Replacement for RBG: "political".
Trump Tax: ok.
Seven Springs is a very large properly that he purchased, and claims and reports as an investment property. This allows deductions of all loan interest, upkeep/maintenance, and operating expenses.
Based on family statements in the past, the property is used primarily as a personal residence.
Reporting a personal property as an investment property in order to deduct expenses is not "tax avoidance", it is tax fraud.
The only people who think that tax avoidance is a good thing are the unethical rich and the American embarrassed millionaires who've been convinced to vote against their own best interests.
It is not illegal. Not the same thing as being "zero wrong"
I feel taxes are so complicated that they can be tweaked to feed any narrative.
You think that is the bigger deal? I suppose it is a variant of doxing, but it doesn't look like the NYT is going to post the actual returns, just their interpretation.
The time for "anonymous sources" is over. No more. Back up the information, or don't publish.
I know how the information was gained: someone leaked it! I am surprised it took this long.
Was it an IRS employee who leaked it in violation of federal law? Was it someone at the accounting firm Trump uses? Maybe we will find out some day, maybe not.
To me the most amazing revelation is that he got paid nearly HALF-A-BILLION for the Apprentice! I really think we should start taxing our OTA networks for their use of the public airwaves, if they have that much $$ to throw around.
There was $230 million in "Endorsement and licensing deals that followed the show’s debut"
So it is not like NBC paid him half a billion. It was only 1/5th of a billion.
[1]: https://apnews.com/article/archive-personal-taxes-donald-tru...
and I imagine people saying just that is why they avoid all mention: they don’t want that to become the story, because that’s how strategists deflect the attention from the actual headlines.
$140 Billion in annual loses means you got to spend a lot of that and enjoy those benefits in the meanwhile.