If Trump just had an accountant create fake returns, how would we know? Would the IRS say “Nope, those aren’t real, but of course we can’t release the ones that are”? If I were Trump (meaning, it’s a given that I would not be ethical), I would just make something up about how much money I earned from my awesome investments and of course that I pay a huuuuge amount of taxes and donate to veterans and Christians and the nicer sorts of racists.
Of course, I still don’t see why we need to see his returns. There’s nothing in them that could make me vote for the guy, nothing that would sway the true believers, and we no longer seem to have the kind of investigative journalist who would go through them thoroughly and explain them. The best we’d get are two competing heavily-spun narratives about why none of us should pay taxes vs. Trump is a corrupt and lying not-so-successful guy, which we have already.
If you are assuming that Republicans make decisions based on evidence, how do you explain the evidence of the last 12 months of the presidential election?
The issue isn’t the hard core supporters or foes. The issue is the undecided’s and wobbly supporters.
I’ve actually been pondering the other issue you raise (fake reports) with respect to the health assessments of the candidates. If I was unethical, I might have one of my young aides submit blood and urine specimens for me, if I was more concerned about the appearance of my health than my actual health.
Of course, I have nothing to worry about- I was just flapping my arms about this morning!
You don’t have to go to Zillow. We may not know the market value of Trump’s real estate portfolio, but we’d know what the assessed value for property tax purposes is.
I wouldn’t rely on that. Like Zillow, it’s not a bad starting point for a rough estimate, but there are sizable margins of error for it.
First, many counties make little effort to match assessed value to market value. In my part of Washington, the county’s assessment was 20% lower than the appraisal my bank used in a refinance last year. Isn’t it California that doesn’t revalue the property until it’s sold?
Second, Trump has been in the news for arguing to the counties that his property tax should be based on a low dollar value while simultaneously bragging to his investors that his net worth calculation should value it at a much higher amount.
I suspect these two points may be flip sides of the same coin.
In NJ, at least, it’s officially recognized that official tax appraisal values don’t reflect market value. The way it works is that once every decade or two the localities reassess all properties, and at that time the properties are expected to reflect market values. But market values fluctuate in subsequent years, and the properties are not reassessed annually. Instead, there a calculation to capture the ratio of market value to assessed value for properties sold each year, and the entire market is assumed to be over/undervalued by this same ratio. But if your property is the only one being assessed at full market value, while the rest of the locality is being assessed based on a value which is 80% of market value, then you’ll pay 25% too much in taxes. So the argument you’re attributing to Trump can be logical.
That said, everyone tries to push down the value of their property for tax purposes. I remember a couple of times when I went down to contest my property value and had to listen to other people’s appeals first. And of every single one was up there putting down their house and explaining how horrible it was and all the reasons no one would ever want to live there. And I was imagining these same people attempting to sell their house and describing it to a potential buyer …
Over at CrowdPac 2072 people have now pledged $167,742. Add in the 5:1 match and that brings the total to a potential $1,000,000+ for veterans if Donald Trump releases his tax returns, as all other major party nominees have done since 1980. What that means was clarified today. Emphasis added: [INDENT][INDENT]Every other candidate in this race, Hillary Clinton, Mike Pence, and Tim Kaine have all released 10 years of their personal tax returns. Tax returns are an important mechanism of transparency showing how a person makes their money, who and where it comes from, what organizations they are affiliated with and who they give money to. This is an important way for our highest office seekers to build trust with the American public.
At this point, given the publicity Trump’s tax returns have received, you really have to wonder why he isn’t willing to release them. Our challenge is for him to release 10 years of tax returns before the final Presidential debate on October 19th. The reason the deadline is so the American public can be given the time to review the tax returns and question Trump about them at the final debate if they so choose. [/INDENT][/INDENT] This is a worthy cause and supports a respectable American tradition. What is Trump afraid of?
Donald Trump and The Trump Organization own or hold stakes in hundreds of companies and I would assume that most of them file tax returns. That would be one hell of a document dump and it might take luck and a team of forensic accountants working overtime to find the bombshell by Election Day.
Now, presumably Donald Trump also files a personal tax return and I believe that is what would traditionally be released. But I don’t think that details on offshore holdings and foreign partnerships would be part of that document - that stuff would probably be buried somewhere in the business tax returns.
Now, in my wildest dreams, the bombshell would be that he is so good at taking business losses and tax write-offs that his adjusted gross income is something like $35,000 a year.
I wonder how the average Trump supporter would feel if he found that Trump used rich guy tax dodges to pay less in taxs than they do.
I know it’s just wishful thinking, but that would be too delicious.
