‘And what sort of monument do you want for the grave?’
‘Something very heavy.’
I cannot watch the debate. I fear it will be poo flinging, and Donalds better at it, and willing to go low. Nothing he says will stop his supporters from voting for him.
I agree. On the other hand, could there be an understanding that the FBI will conduct a thorough background check on all presidential candidates from the major parties, and issue a standardized report to the public on them, and that wherever possible the federal government will cooperate with this? The report could include all criminal and civil court cases involving the person, their tax returns for the last 25 years, and whatever information about investigations involving the person that could be released without harming active investigations.
The public could decide what to do with it.
I am convinced that the only way for Biden to win by unanimous decision is for him to punch Trump in his slack wet mouth and make him bleed. Since we’re unlikely to be so fortunate, the debate will be like watching Biden in a checkers match against a belligerent fat yellow pigeon.
…who knocks over the pieces, shits on the board, humps an American flag on stage and then declares victory.
Totally not the point here, but I still have no understanding of why real estate developers get to write off the depreciation of an asset that is appreciating in value.
As it happens, I, like you and every other person here, could get the same deduction that Trump gets. And absolutely none of us, including you, would want to. Because the way we’d get that deduction would be by going broke, like Trump did. And anyone who’s not insane doesn’t want to go broke.
Yup. Like this NBC headline:
Trump tax records show duplicity. That’s devastating for his campaign.
A headline based in reality might say “should be” devastating, or “used to would be” devastating, or “for a Democrat would be” devastating. NBC: get with the fucking program.
Or fraud. Or more likely the combination of both. Either he’s a terrible businessman who lost incredible amounts of money, or he’s a tax cheat and he pretended to lose incredible amounts of money. Probably somewhere in between.
The rumors of Trump’s impeachment and criminal indictments have been greatly exaggerated.
He is being influenced by those he owes money too. When I had my government security clearance, you would be denied one if they see you are having tax problems or are heavily leveraged. That opens you up to blackmail and a poor security risk.
That was my point. I have no fear of a ‘mid-level Government official’ having the power to decide the Chief Executive’s access. Investigations would be (or at least should be) concluded before an election. God knows the election process is long enough. I do fear a Chief Executive who is an asset of an enemy state.
Absolutely.
Here’s a handy guide for Aji_de_Gallina
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Start a business. Fuck up royally by ignoring the business end, and just look at fabric swatches for the couch in the lobby
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Write off all of the losses on your failed business against the income from your regular job.
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Yay, no taxes!
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Oops, you also have no money. mmmm.
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Bank assesses you as a very poor risk, so you get loans from some shady dudes down by the tracks.
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Brag about how well you’re doing to everyone
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Get elected mayor based on the bullshit you spewed about how “successful” a businessman you are, despite the fact you screwed up your business ventures (see #1)
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Get a bunch of sycophants on board to support you in exchange for “favors from the mayor”
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When the thugs from the tracks want their money back, do some unspecified backroom favors for them as well.
May I request that the mods change the thread title to “Donald Trump, Tax Avoider?” Although Trump is indeed scummy in many ways, there is a huge difference between tax evasion (illegal) and tax avoidance (legal), and the title conflates the two.
A thought that has just occurred to me: given these disclosures and the various income streams that Barack and Michelle Obama have received since leaving office, wouldn’t it be a lark if Obama now had a higher net worth than Trump?
Given that, at this time, we can’t be sure on which side Trump falls, how about Donald Trump, Tax Cheat?
How about: Until the bastard releases his taxes, and given his history of a world made of bullshit, the reasonable thing would be to assume he’s a tax evader.
The AMT has different rules, allowing fewer deductions (such as state income tax) and extending the depreciation life of assets, requiring you to depreciate some things that you can expense in full in the normal tax code, and a wide variety of other things, but it’s still possible to lose money on the AMT and still have plenty cash to spend because you were loaned all of it. As much as the AMT is described in the way you just did, it’s really not nearly as comprehensive as it’s made out to be, and in this case it’s mainly because it doesn’t tax unrealized gains or loan proceeds. The main way that real estate developers and owners make money is through the appreciation of their properties, and they can access this appreciation in value before selling and thus realizing a taxable gain by refinancing the mortgage and getting 80% of the value of the property as the new principal balance of the loan.
So from a tax perspective, he’ll be deeply underwater on that property with more owed on it than he paid for it, but he can still deduct the interest, operating expenses, and depreciation, which for practically all landlords with a mortgage will lead them to showing a net loss. The only thing that might change under AMT is the property depreciation schedule, but that’s been the same for real estate for decades now - maybe a few of his old properties there will be small adjustments, but not much.
As to why you get to take something called “depreciation” on an asset that doesn’t depreciate in value, well, that’s because there’s no distinction in the Internal Revenue Code between assets used in a business that economically depreciate and those that don’t. You get to depreciate everything used in your business according to its standard lifetime regardless of what might actually happen to the value of the property. This is true for all of accounting, not just taxes. In some ways, one might say that the lifetime of buildings is generally taken to be way too short, as they can last an extremely long time with proper maintenance, something you can also deduct in full so long as you’re not improving the property. But the thing is, office buildings and apartment buildings do need to be periodically updated to be sure that they are valuable for tenants. I don’t think you could rent out an such a building that was built 100 years ago without having made major improvements. The thing is in the real estate market, the value of having a building at all on a location tends to go up in value much faster than inflation due to the increased density of the population, so you can have a building that is worth much more than you paid for it even counting all of your improvements, just by having held on to it and kept it in rentable condition. The tax law really doesn’t like having to figure out the value of something every single year; the only time it thinks it’s reasonable to determine the value is when it changes hands or is put into service. If it changes hands at fair market value, that’s great, but if it’s say, being passed on to heirs and estate tax needs to be assessed, then they’ll have to come in and figure out a value for it from other factors. Thus not allowing depreciation on some business assets because they might not actually go down in value would be a huge problem in terms of determining which assets qualify for it.
As a side note, you are required to figure out the value of the land that your building is on and not depreciate the amount of the purchase price allocable to the land, since land is never depreciated. But the building is something that’s slowly over time reduced in utility due to exposure to the elements and the progress of technology, even if economic factors will tend to cause things to happen such that the value of the property goes up, simply because what utility is left is so much more valuable. And by that standard, it’s seen as needed to be subject to depreciation.
one thing that maybe could hurt him with religious folks is if he paid for an abortion. If he did he was probably smart enough to pay with cash leaving no paper trail. It would be his word vs. the woman’s word.
I’m a fan of Canadian conservative Frum. Here’s what he says in The Atlantic. (Which usually allows several free articles before paywall.)