Here’s something I wish would get talked about more. Trump reported a net operating loss of about $1 billion in 1995. The total amount of net operating losses for all US taxpayers was about $50 billion in 1995. So Trump was responsible for around 2% of all net operating losses in the whole country.
Put another way, given 200,000,000 taxpayers in 1995 (an estimate that makes the math work out more easily). The average net operating loss was $25. Trump’s net operating loss was 40,000,000 times the average taxpayer’s.
It’s not just that he took advantage of this. It’s that he took a massively disproportionate share of this.
Trump himself isn’t portraying it as something usual. He says it was “brilliant.” And that’s what Kaine should have said tonight when Pence asked him point blank, “Do you take every deduction to which you are entitled?”
“As far as I know, yes. When my accountant tells me I can deduct something, I deduct it. And I sometimes make investments with the tax code in mind [or whatever–this is where he should confess to any tax avoidance strategies he’s used]. But what I don’t do is quote-unquote brilliantly manipulate and game the system in order to pay the absolute least amount I can possibly get away with without going to jail. Certainly not in order to pay absolutely nothing. So I suppose I probably do pay somewhat more than I probably could if I ran my personal finances as ruthlessly as Trump runs his businesses. But you know what, the American people can decide for themselves if I’ve paid my fair share or not because I’ve released my tax returns. And you know what else I do, with some of the money that I get back from those deductions? I give to charity. I give to my church. What I don’t do is set up a fake charity and solicit donations from other people so that I can do what’s called ‘self-dealing’ in order use the charity as a personal piggy bank, which is illegal by the way.”
One aspect of this debate that I find particularly interesting is how some people view the law in relation to ethical behavior. Countless times on this board there are debates about actions that are totally, 100% legal, but are strongly criticized for being the “wrong thing to do.” I could list dozens of examples, but let’s just say Colin Kaepernick’s refusal to stand for the national anthem as an action that is completely legal, but under fierce criticism.
Then we have examples of debates where it is recognized that ethics sometime override the law. The OP for example has recently become fascinated with jury nullification (cites on request) in which he strongly advocates that the law should be ignored if a person prefers that the law were different. The OP has strongly implied that if a woman were sexually assaulted, her husband should suffer little to no punishment for murdering the suspected perpetrator in cold blood.
But all these questions of what is ethical versus what is legal appear to go out the window when money is involved. Here is a billionaire, who probably makes in 48 hours what the average household makes in a whole year, and many are saying that he should have no ethical obligation to contribute to our national defense, infrastructure, space travel, prisons, etc for as long as two decades. And what’s more, if he did seek to contribute to some modest degree to these pursuits, **he would be doing something wrong. **
Maybe this discussion of Trump should prompt a discussion of why we embrace greed as an obligation.
Well, because it’s taxes, and it’s a case of people not liking taxes and people not paying taxes if they don’t have to. For all that the government in World War 2 tried to make paying taxes an act of patriotism, for most people, income tax is “me having to spend a lot of time and energy filling out confusing forms so that the government can take the money I earned and spend it on useless crap.” So while people get bothered by the idea of somebody cheating on their taxes, I don’t know if people get so bothered by the idea of people taking deductions and stuff to lower the amount they have to pay, and I think that’s especially true when the politician is a Republican, since the party’s attitude tends to be “Hey, people pay too much in taxes anyway.”
I don’t know about you, but I have a hard time paying the IRS, which he would be in charge of, knowing that I’m paying my taxes and guys with infinitely more resources like him pay zero. I understand that it’s business, it’s a business loss, the tax code is designed to help entrepreneurs, and it’s perfectly legal – I get all that. I also get that he pays other taxes – guess what? So do the rest of us. So the next sonofabitch that whips out the old stat shit talking about 45 percent of Americans are freeloaders who pay no taxes, I’ll tell them to shut the fuck up. The real issue here is that tax code is designed to help the wealthy get wealthier and stay wealthier. And contrary to popular opinion, the wealth doesn’t always get reinvested in jobs. These are not job creators we’re talking about.
Donald Trump’s finances need to be exposed. He’s a complete liar about his wealth and this is just the tip of the iceberg. More bluntly, I just want the fucker to lose and if it requires a bit of sophistry and misdirected populism and outrage to make that happen, I’m all for it. Americans are on the verge of making a colossal mistake and I just don’t want to live with the consequences of it. This is not to say that we’re guaranteed to prosper under president Clinton – she’ll be facing significant headwinds. But I know Trump would be a disaster.
Trump is bragging about his greatness and mastery of the tax code. If elected, what, specifically, is he going to do? Will he expand the loop holes he’s benefited from to everyone else, making them more accessible to the non-rich? Does he have a “trickle-down” tax plan for the country? He has not been clear with his intentions here, while patting himself on the back. That’s why it’s an issue. That and the blatant hypocrisy, as pointed out above.
Ugh, this is a terrible way of putting it. “Net operating loss” sounds like it has a distribution with an exceedingly long tail. That is, I bet a substantial majority of taxpayers in 1995 had a net operating loss of $0, which would make the median $0. Mean is of limited utility when you’re dealing with a distribution like this. I suspect the number of people writing off losses of around $25 in 1995 is tiny. I’m open to being corrected if someone has some figures, though.
As to the topic, I think a guy taking advantage of tax loopholes to pay no taxes has a vested interest in keeping the loopholes around, and so I tend to distrust them when they say, “Oh, I know about these loopholes, therefore I’m the best guy to get rid of them!” Especially when that same guy wasn’t saying a damn thing about tax loopholes until the whole tax return leak. It’d be different if he’d been thundering for a long time about how ridiculously low his effective tax rate is.
Trump might not have written it personally, but it was written to favor people like him due to their contributions to the (mostly Republican) people who did write the tax code. When Republicans are questioned about this, they try to justify it in two ways that seem to contradict each other.
They claim that lower taxes on the wealthy results in job creation and growth to the economy.
When 1 doesn’t happen, and it didnt during the trickle down eras of Reagan and GWB, they say this. “What did you expect? Companies are only going to hire the people they need to meet the demand for their product. Of course they’ll pocket any extra money, it’s their fiduciary interest to the investors.”
If you make money by means other than wages, it means thst you most likely made that money off someone else’s labor. Someone who did the actual work and should be fairly compensated for that. But try getting Republicans to agree that people should be fairly compensated with a mandatory minimum wage and see what happens.
I’d consider him an idiot for not using it as well. But you know what else I’d consider him an idiot if he did:
Run for President knowing that his tax returns would be an issue.
While running for president, attack people who don’t pay taxes, knowing that you, yourself, have successfully avoided taxation on several already public returns.
Not make a central part of your pitch “wealthy people like me sometimes don’t pay taxes for YEARS - and that is wrong” and promising to close the loopholes from the beginning which would negate #1.
I very much agree. This development makes me very much want better documentation of Trumps claims to be a generous charitable donor. (I admit that I am quite skeptical; any claims of anonymous donation will be severely discounted by me, as I don’t personally believe that he has it in him.) I would cite Warren Buffet here as someone who speaks and acts otherwise.
Unless you are an anarchist, it is important for any government that one would wish to run to be able to collect enough taxes to perform its functions; whether that be to run a strong military, maintain law & order, forcibly deport illegal aliens, pay to build an enormous wall visible from space (or at least extort your neighbor to do so), or even to perform more mundane functions like social services and maintaining infrastructure. This is true for Republicans and even Libertarians, just as it is for Democrats. I personally feel that an elected leader has **very little moral authority **to ask his citizenry to pay taxes **when he has not himself paid **(presumably for decades), yet manages to live quite large. This affected Mit Romney (not grandiose in lifestyle) as well, just on the basis of paying a lower percentage of his income than many (although not most) Americans making far less than him.
Very interesting points here, I’ll have to digest.
A couple points. To me the most surprising thing is: how did this brilliant businessman lose nearly a billion in one year? Conjecture: fun and games with subsidiaries located in off shore tax havens.
His tax accountant says that Trump doesn’t know nuttin’ about the tax code. He signed the return and asked no questions. It would interesting to see his response if someone asked him about the carried interest loophole. Has he ever even heard of it?
When did Trump promise that he’d release his tax returns? I’m thinking it was more than a year ago.
So why the hell didn’t he instruct his accountants to be sure that he paid a certain percentage of his 2015 net income in taxes? I’d personally say 20% would be a decent amount. And given that he’s made being such a successful businessman a big part of his campaign, his accountants should also be instructed to maximize his net income. At the same time, he could have made a point of donating some pretty big money to charities (carefully selected so that most people would agree they were worthy causes).
Then he could pussyfoot around about releasing the tax forms. When he deemed the time o be right, he could make a big deal about releasing his 1040 without the supporting schedules. Not enough info there to make it clear he could have paid less, but enough to show he made a lot of money and paid some big $ in taxes. The charitable contribution info would come from the charities he supported.
Yes, this would cost him more, but he could consider it to be a campaign expense. How much is the to-do about his taxes costing him?
That is essentially what Romney did. Knowing he was going to run for President, he changed some of his tax strategies for appearances. It cost him more money, but it made him a significantly more viable candidate (not viable enough to win, but his tax returns, once released, weren’t a huge issue).
Trump tried to bluster through on some sort of “I’ll get around to it someday” strategy in terms of releasing - possibly figuring that he wasn’t going to win the Primary, so it would be a non-issue.
Election law, by the way, is very generous to politicians who still have donations left over in their coffers after they loose who retire - it functionally becomes their money. Which means losing an election can be a fairly profitable endeavor - if you avoid a lot of spending and use other people’s money.
Add to that the reality that this is not happening is vacuum, besides the monumental hypocrisy when Trump criticized the ones not paying enough in the past, his troubles with the Trump Foundation are also related to taxes and there is a good chance that crimes were committed there.
THE WSJ just published a piece (sorry, no link) speculating that releasing his 2015 return will be Trump’s October surprise. Since he very likely filed an extension, his return will be due Oct. 15.
It does seem to me that if so he could have forestalled some of the negative press he’s been getting by saying right away that of course he paid federal income tax, and he’d release his 2015 return as soon as it was completed. But then I don’t live in Trumpland, so their logic always escapes me.
The WSJ article pointed out that taxpayers have 2 years to file an amended return, so if he loses the election (or I guess even if he wins) he could change his return and get the tax money back.
Because Trump had no intention at that time of actually WINNING the nomination. His plan was to come in second, avoid a lot of the investigation into his claims and his business, and then use that fame (I could have done better, it was rigged, I really won) to improve his notoriety and his business bottom line.
He fell into the win, and now his ego won’t let him quit.