Over the weekend, The New York Times revealed that they had obtained a trove of President Donald Trump’s tax returns. The documents reveal, among other startling details, that Trump only paid $750 in income taxes in both 2016 and 2017. In 10 out of the previous 15 years, he paid absolutely nothing in income taxes thanks to claiming huge losses on his tax returns. Some of those huge losses underline an ongoing fight between Trump and the IRS, which is investigating a staggering $72.9 million tax refund that Trump claimed (and received!) in the wake of supposed huge losses. A ruling against him in that audit could mean a bill for Trump of over $100 million.
Trump promptly freaked out about the Times report on Monday morning. On Twitter, he tried to characterize the report as little more than a smear campaign, but the facts are there. The publication has the records, and they reveal, as the Times memorably notes, that Trump “has been more successful playing a business mogul than being one in real life.”
On Monday, Trump tweeted, in part:
‘The Fake News Media, just like Election time 2016, is bringing up my Taxes & all sorts of other nonsense with illegally obtained information & only bad intent. I paid many millions of dollars in taxes but was entitled, like everyone else, to depreciation & tax credits. Also, if you look at the extraordinary assets owned by me, which the Fake News hasn’t, I am extremely under leveraged – I have very little debt compared to the value of assets.’
Any potential evidence for this claim of some kind of huge financial values for his assets is, of course, not immediately publicly available — we’re just supposed to take the serially and pathologically lying president’s word for it.
He claimed that he “may” release a financial statement, which he says “is a very IMPRESSIVE Statement, and also shows that I am the only President on record to give up my yearly $400,000 plus Presidential Salary!” Maybe so, but the Trump Organization has earned more than two years of presidential salaries via payments from the Secret Service alone. A recent Washington Post tally revealed that the Secret Service had paid the Trump family business over $1.1 million (and counting!) in their quest to follow around the president at his properties.
As for his claim that he has actually paid very large amounts of taxes: according to the evidence, he did not pay large amounts of personal income taxes — at all. After Trump Organization lawyer Alan Garten made a similar statement, the Times noted that the claim that Trump has paid large amounts of “personal taxes” seems to be “conflating income taxes with other federal taxes Mr. Trump has paid — Social Security, Medicare and taxes for his household employees.” Furthermore, Garten claimed that some of Trump’s taxes have been “paid with tax credits” — but that’s not how tax credits work. They reduce tax bills; they don’t actively represent any transfer of value to the federal government.
In other words — Trump is financially on the rocks, big time, and no number of self-indulgent tweets will save him financially. On Monday, Trump also repeated his anti-mail-in voting fearmongering and his brazenly ridiculous insinuation that Joe Biden might be on performance-enhancing drugs.
The Ballots being returned to States cannot be accurately counted. Many things are already going very wrong!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 28, 2020
Joe Biden just announced that he will not agree to a Drug Test. Gee, I wonder why?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 28, 2020
Check out Twitter’s response below:
