Reminder; tax avoidance != tax fraud.
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.
You are either a consultant, or an employee.
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.
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.
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.
The fact that Trump is at least 300-400 million dollars in debt to unknown parties is a huge national security risk.
TL;DR: Think “Schrödinger's Criminality”.
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.
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?
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.
However, at this point this sort of thing is baked in to opinions of the president. I don't think anyone is surprised.
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.
"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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Where would the money come from to keep the company in business?
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?
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.