It would be ignorance if people thought his actions were illegal. Few if any folks are saying that. When folks disagree with your assessment of how the wealthy should approach tax obligations, that’s not ignorance, that’s an ethical disagreement.
No, I don’t actually think that “any and all tax positions should be taken to minimize tax liability.” I think that’s a shitty approach to living in society, a fundamentally adversarial approach to the public.
It’s not something that should be illegal, of course, but it is relevant to whether a person is temperamentally suited to head up government.
I think the line of attack on this has to be along the lines of “if you’re such a great businessman, how’d you lose a billion in a year?” rather than not paying taxes. The vast majority of the US tries to minimize their tax burden.
Yeah, going after his business record is the way to go. This revelation is akin to finding out that the homecoming king really has a really, really small penis.
Yeah there’s also an obvious motive: her child seems to be the odd one out. Marla probably feels like she and her offspring got the short end of the stick, so this is her chance to exact a little sweet revenge. I bet there’s more to come, too.
It’s actually not that good a line of attack anyway, since in his book “The Art of the Comeback” he admits to losing a billion dollars and then tells how he came back from it. So actually he can turn that into a strength. His “I don’t pay taxes because I’m smart” and “it would only be squandered anyway” lines were much more damaging in the eyes of the public IMO.
The messenger who was supposed to take the returns to Marla to sign could have stopped at Kinko’s and made a copy. The secretary who was supposed to give the returns to the messenger could have made a copy in case the messenger lost them.
Haven’t we seen Trump deal with stuff like that before? When folks came after him about the businesses that went bankrupt, he just said that he has lots of businesses and most of them profit – and he occasionally uses the bankruptcy laws to cut his losses on one of the few projects that doesn’t pan out.
So figure he’ll just say he made a billion or more in most years, and somebody leaked records for one of the few years that didn’t work out well, but if you saw all of his tax records you’d know that he’s long since gotten back in the black during years when he hit it out of the park – and he’d prove that by releasing all of his tax returns, except he’s under audit, and his lawyers have strongly advised him not to release them until the audit is over, but if CROOKED HILLARY will release her THIRTY THOUSAND e-mails, then he’ll release them against the advice of his attorneys just to prove that 95% of the time he’s a brilliant businessman who makes yuge profits by employing lots of people, and how many jobs have you created Hillary?
Or something like that; again, isn’t that pretty much the exact move he’s used?
A question: we’re talking about Trump’s personal income taxes, not income taxes for Trump, Inc. right? I’m assuming there is a difference (correct me if I’m wrong about that). Is it possible that Trump, personally, took a uuuuuuge loss one year, but that his businesses were still doing OK?
It depends on how the businesses were incorporated. Both the (very small) companies I run are taxed as S-Corps - the income flows straight through to our personal taxes. I suspect that Trump organizes as C-Corps - where his companies pay taxes, then he pays (or doesn’t) taxes on the dividends - the dreaded double taxation that conservatives rail against.
Some tax experts are saying its unlikely that billion dollars he lost was even his personal money - but there is apparently a loophole for that as well. If that’s the case, he’s been getting a tax break for years for losing other people’s money.
Now, its legal - but it isn’t ethical.
Also, Trump does not, on his individual taxes, have a fiduciary responsibility to pay as little taxes as possible. In a publicly traded company, for instance, the NYT, you do have a fiduciary responsibility to your shareholders to minimize your tax burden within acceptable levels of risk. But the claim that Trump has such a responsibility on his personal taxes, or within his privately held corporations, because he’s a businessman is bogus.
Possibly, but this is hypothetical as there is nothing to suggest overseas income shifting. I wouldn’t be surprised if that were true though as it’s a standard practice among many large businesses. I see no ethical problems with doing so. If the rules are setup to allow it, then it would be a mistake to not take advantage of those rules. As a fiduciary to his companies, it would be questionable if he and others did not take available advantageous steps available to them.
You’re asking why the fundamental principle of matching income to expense is important? It benefits everyone, not just the rich. Here is the first thing I googled. coremelt also spoke to this as well.
Tax policy affects everyone’s life. This isn’t about not knowing something more specific like the carried interest rule (though that’s been in the news quite a bit as well), but not knowing even the basics of how a business operates.
Do you think a business should pay more taxes than they owe? I understand no one is mistaking the actions as illegal - but not knowing about operating loss carry forwards, or other basic accounting and tax principles is still ignorance, illegality or not. I think it’s pretty widely believed that attempting to minimize tax liability. So at what level of income does this become unethical to you?
Does anyone think Amazon losing money for nearly 20 years makes them bad at business?
OK, thanks. On that last part, I still can’t fault someone for taking a tax deduction they were legally entitled to. I can’t imagine a situation where I would give up such a deduction. I’m not sure anyone is making that claim that he has a fiduciary responsibility to do so, although at least one person did note that his accountant has such a duty to inform him of his eligibility (which makes sense to me).
I was just watching a few Trump surrogates on TV this morning and something occurred to me: wouldn’t it just be a total disaster for Trump to actually release his tax returns after this story has broken?
He’s staked out a position very clearly that he does not want to release his tax returns. Doing so would make him look weak. Like he has no stamina. No stam-in-ah. And he can’t very well sue the New York Times for printing a story if he then goes and releases all the tax returns.
I just hope that Trump has the STAMINA not to release his returns. You know, for his sake.
Dumb question, but are the state returns that were released the personal income tax returns of Donald and Marla Trump or the corporate returns of the Trump Organization or another corporate entity?
Because I saw Rudy Giuliani on This Week with George Stephanopoulos defending Trump and his argument was that Trump had a fiduciary responsibility to his investors to take every tax break he was entitled to. It seems to me that this argument doesn’t hold water if these were his personal returns.
There is nothing inherently immoral about not paying more than you legally owe. I don’t even think this is an issue of ethics. This is more about ignorant, low net worth people displaying class envy.
I’m sure Trump would have rather had a 900 million gain and paid taxes on that than taking a 900 million loss that he can use to offset federal income tax.
So, do we have any evidence yet that Trump was actually out of pocket $916,000,000? Or was it basically a paper loss?
I think it’s perfectly reasonable to be skeptical until he produces the long-form documentation that would prove that he really did lose that much money.
What is a paper loss and how do you use that to offset income? My understanding is the losses and gains need to be realized via a sale before they impact taxes, typically. A paper loss, in my understanding, is you don’t sell the asset but the value is estimated to be less for real estate or the share value is currently less for equities.
I currently have a paper loss, as I understand it, in one of my mutual funds. I can’t use that as an offset for other capital gains since I haven’t sold it.