New York Times’ Trump Tax Return ‘Bombshell’ Is A JokeIf this is the big pre-debate 'gotcha' that the Democrats and their allies in Big Media had in mind, it’s a bit of a flop.
By Ryan Ellis
September 28, 2020
The New York Times published an article Sunday evening analyzing several years of tax returns filed by President Donald Trump. This illegal leak of the president’s tax returns revealed nothing we didn’t already know about the Trump business hydra: It is complicated, has a lot of expenses that generate tax deductions, and hires very smart tax advisers to make the whole thing work with as low a legal tax liability as possible. If that sounds familiar, it’s because the Democrats also tried this line of attack against Trump in the 2016 debates. ...
Not surprisingly, a business empire run this way robs a lot of profitable Peters to pay a lot of unprofitable Pauls. The New York Times article throws around terms that sound tricky or scary to normal people, but to tax professionals are part of any business tax return — depreciation, amortization, business bad debt, net operating losses, passive losses, historic rehabilitation credits, consulting fees, and the like. The bottom line is that the Trump business empire is basically a closed circuit — profits from business A are used to prop up business B and acquire business C. That creates a lot of deductions that offset the profit, which in turn means that in some years, very little tax is owed.
Does that make Trump a tax cheat? Not by itself, certainly. The IRS or other tax authorities are of course free to challenge the legality of this capital loss or that consulting expense, but that’s a matter of analyzing facts and circumstances case by case. There’s nothing wrong with taking these deductions in and of themselves. ...
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