It now seems certain that Donald Trump has paid no US Federal taxes for nearly two decades. He has pretty much admitted that a loss of $916 million in 1995 wiped out his liabilities since then.
Many will be shocked by this.
Many will, I think rightly, wonder why he could not have admitted this earlier.
Much discussion has been on whether or not the tax code is fair or not.
But it seems to me that the real question is something different: it is how could Trump have afforded to lose so much and carry on in business? That is a phenomenal loss to fund. How did he incur it? Who paid for it? Why? What influence did they then have? What were the consequences?
Those all seem fair questions to me because no one gets to put a loss of nearly $1 billion on their tax return without there being consequences. I suspect those consequences are what people need to know about.
Or to put it another way, how could Trump afford not to pay tax?
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How was this loss sustained? Was it a real loss? Or was it created somehow without significant economic effects (i.e. a tax shelter)?
Precisely
I would guess one of his bankruptcieswhere his creditors take the hit but he gets to write off their loans and his assets. I don’t know enough about the US tax system to be sure but this seems likely.
And we saw Giuliana and Christie say Trump was a genius to do that. No shame at all. That they can even make such a statement tells us a lot about the mind set-and that they think there is enough support in the country to get away with it.
It is astonishing
I found the whole notion that someone can offset their personal as opposed to business income against future tax in such a way a bit strange.
As far as I can tell it is related to tax breaks/perks for real estate investors.
I just hope such an occurence isn’t possible in the UK.
But the US have decided to tax the rest of the world relentless through FATCA with amazing consequences. Shame on them for not looking a little closer to home….