I was thinking of this, which is writing off debts that are owed to you.
You can also write off the net loss of a business, which can be construed as a debt. Doesn’t get you out of paying the debt, but you can still write it off.
As the King of Debt told us, he loves debt. I’m confident a squiz of his tax returns will disclose why.
A business that loses money isn’t necessarily in debt, but that still would be an embarrassment for Trump. In general, the write-offs or deductions could contradict statements he has said about his “successes.”
Other embarrassing things could be: showing he isn’t as rich as he says he is; showing he doesn’t give to charity as much as he says he does; showing income from disreputable sources (like Russian interests, maybe); income that indicates conflicts of interest; income funneled through all his LLCs; foreign taxes he has paid and where; and how much he has personally benefited from the tax law of 2017.
Seems disingenuous to worry about this issue when you argued that Merrick Garland being denied a vote because not having a vote counted as “advice and consent” based on strict reading of the text, but now we have a genie in the bottle issue because of strict reading of the text.
I remain unconvinced that he is just ‘some guy’ from the upper-level IRS apparatus - I doubt an advisory position would put put him on the payroll as an upper-level government bureaucrat.
There is certainly a difference between saying a lawyer would advise a client against something (I agree he very likely might do so; lawyers are cautious about such matters) and saying I will not follow a directive to do something.
Trump’s tax returns may not necessarily reveal his worth, particularly if the money is tied up in hundreds of different smaller LLCs.
I think what Democrats want to do is to be able to use his tax returns to start building paper trails. It starts with naming names. Whom does he owe? Who owes him? Who does business with him? What kind of business do they do together? Where are they? How are they employed?
I don’t see how SCOTUS could rule against the House. The law clearly says that they can request a tax return, and the law cited is the law that was enacted specifically with the POTUS in mind.
I think Trump will get subpoenaed and he’ll probably just tell the House to fuck off. And then things could get interesting.
All of this gives Trump an incentive to try to keep his returns hidden.
And we can’t rule out the possibility that the returns will reveal actual tax fraud by Trump. He would know that such a situation would test the infamous Justice Department Guideline (preventing indictment of sitting presidents) like nothing else, so far, has done.
This looks like it’s shaping up to be the litmus test. Can Trump and/or those enabling him simply, blatantly violate the law? Is Trump above the law? Stay tuned.
(Is “The Law” in this country a farce that no one else should be concerned with, either? Stay tuned.)
While that is true for the tax returns of individuals, it is not true for tax returns of entities, such as TRUMP INC or whatever his corporate entities are. Entity tax returns, Form 1120, 1065, etc, generally include balance sheets too, which list assets, liabilities and capital.
I think Trump is scared of release because they will show he is not nearly as rich as he claims to be.
It’s part of an ongoing pattern that dates back to the firing of Comey and continued with McCabe and Sessions. Meanwhile his cabinet picks like Devos and Pruitt engage in naked corruption. He uses Trump Hotel and Mar-a-Lago to put money back into his business. But ignoring a House subpoena would be an escalation because it be the president ignoring separation of powers and federal law.
More troubling is how Trump is how the executive branch and its various agencies are beginning to reflect Trump’s personality. Civil service is in very real danger of being replaced by a government of loyalists. He’s hiring loyalists in the Dept of Justice, and even worse, he now seems determined to do the same at the Federal Reserve. This is how authoritarians destroy the economies of the countries they try to take control of. Erdogan destroyed Turkey’s once thriving economy by hiring lackeys who printed money at the snap of Erdogan’s finger. Venezuela started crumbling when Chavez chased out some of the ministers within the national energy sector. Trump really is serious about replacing competent financial minds with cartoonish characters like Stephen Moore and Herman Cain.