DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus Trump Paid $750 in Federal Taxes in 2016 and 2017

Good thread on SDNY case against Trump and his tax returns among a broader scope of investigation...

Shoutout to all the illegal immigrants who still pay more in taxes than trump.

Shoutout to the interns around the country who pay more in taxes than trump.

Shoutout to all the suburban housewives who sell arts and crafts projects on Etsy that pay more in taxes than trump.

Forget them.... I wanna figure out how i can pay no taxes like Trump!

j/c:

I thought that almost everyone knew that the rich business owners have been able to avoid being fairly taxed for generations?

That is not me excusing Trump, but damn man, this is nothing new.

Since this is a sport's board, I will use this example. Do some of you remember when there was a lockout or strike in MLB and the players went to the courts to open the MLB books? George Steinbrenner was the owner of the Yanks and he owned shipping companies and other businesses. He wrote off almost everything on his baseball team. The union and the owners settled right after that and the rest of the owners did not have to open their books.

This is the way of the world. It's not just a Trump thing.

You're not wrong. Anyone worth what these people are worth should be paying taxes.

But, if he got a $73 MILLION refund........how can anyone justify that?

It's insane because I own a small metal fabrication shop, and we have been profitable, but obviously very small scale compared to these companies, and we get slammed with taxes on any profit we make. I have no idea what these guys can claim, and get away with. We get audited on our legit expenses every couple years.

That's not Trump. That's the tax code. Go to a consumption or a flat tax if you have problems. As long as he's legal, it's all good with me. When I had all me kids in the house, I got huge (yuge) tax returns. Not so much now.

Some people on this forum should learn basic accounting.
Math does not like or care about feelings.

I am not justifying it. It sucks. Just saying that this crap has been going on for generations. And guys like us pay for the rich and the poor. Yet, we get disrespected.

I feel you when you talk about your business. It sucks. My daughter's business isn't getting any breaks. And I recently had surgery and can barely maintain my balance for very long, but I've been working my ass off and it really is hurting my recovery.

I truly feel that our current political parties don't give a crap about people like us, other than to use us as pawns in their chess game.

You know, one candidate wanted to tax the 1% for them to pay their fair share so the less fortunate could get to enjoy a level playing field.

Oh man, someone did the math on all the public documents available for what he owes.

This. Is. Staggering.

The Tax Code isn't Math that fell from the Heavens?

We set it up like this.

As I've said numerous times in this thread -- the main thing this shows is how broken the system is.

The second thing this shows is that (factually) Trump's business empire has been doing very poorly for a long time.

I have never said that there is anything obviously illegal in this tax returns. The NYTimes hasn't said that either.

You have to get rid of write-offs. Why specify a flat-tax or consumption tax (two taxes that are, by their nature really regressive).

**In Theory, not advocating for this** You could also have taxes that increase drastically at higher earning levels -- if you limit the ability to write-off losses, then the rich will pay more money.

***Also, in theory, not advocating for this*** A wealth Tax is, by far, the most effective method of eliminating these sorts of tax shenanigans by the super-rich.

The problem here is loopholes and overcomplications.

Flat tax. Everyone pays the same percentage of income. We're all equal.

Consumption tax. Everyone pays the same percentage of what they buy. We're all equal.

No loopholes, no deductions, no irs, no whining from libs about taxes they do everything to get out of paying too.

How about Flat Tax + Wealth Tax?

or a graduated Flat Tax?

20% on the first 100k, 30% on 100-1000K, 40% over 1M?

No deductions, no exclusions.

To Expand on this:

1.) I'm not opposed to an actual flat tax. However, the big problem in the US (compared to almost every country out there) -- is that relatively poor people may a much higher level of tax than the rate that is shown on their 1040.

Because, only in the US is "Medicare/Medicaid", "Social Security", and Monthly Insurance money taken out in addition to the actual tax you are charged.

My effective tax rate is 30%, once you include all of the other random money that gets taken out of my paycheck every week. But many of those extra fees are flat fees - and are thus super regressive.

So sure, make it a flat tax, at say 25% -- but give people credits back for the other random fees that they have to pay every month.

LOL Goes to show why he’s under two financial investigations and why he’s in debt bigly. Golf courses and hotels losing millions. LOL the GOP conservative leadership...how to fail at business and get the blue collar american tax payer to pay for it.

That amount of delinquent debt means under normal circumstances, trump wouldn’t be able to get a security clearance.

As someone who has had a security clearance, One of the many reasons the government doesn’t approve people is debt. If you have a massive amount of debt, that makes you very likely to be compromised. More likely to accept bribes and other forms of payments in exchange for documents, favorable policy decisions, etc.

Ya know, one if many reasons trump has to force the government to give Kushner a top secret clearance, because his background was so messed up, he couldn’t get one on his own merit.

That’s the kind of dude people are supporting. Smh.

The party of fiscal responsibility, and law and order. Cheating the american taxpayer and bending the law once again.

Almost spit coffee thru my nose this morning when Mika on Morning Joe said Trump is the biggest loser as a businessman. I bet 40 disagrees.

How much did this clown inherit from daddy, again?

Inherit is an interesting choice of words:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/politics/donald-trump-father-will/

He got a small million dollar loan then had to pull up his sleeves and beg for his bailouts from time to time. I thought I read somewhere that by the time Trump did his casinos, his dad had given him roughly 350 million. But who knows what the truth really is...

Quoting again for emphasis on this notion that "the rich just don't pay taxes". A statement and a notion that just is not true. They pay less taxes normally for sure. They have accounts working for them to minimize their taxes for sure. People suggesting that Trump paying such extraordinary low Fed taxes is a non-story are not being accurate.

It would seem that either [1] Trump is manipulating his taxes - in which case the IRS would come after him (as seems to be the case). == or == [2] He's so bad at business and so incompetent that he's losing money at such a staggering rate that he's gor enormous write offs, this also appears to be true. . . .
Of course - literally no-one is shocked because basically we all know that Trump is this type of scumbag individual that will skirt the law and do the minimum possible or as far as breaking the law, he will do the maximum of what he might reasonably get away with. . . . is he the only one? Hell no. But that doesn't change who TRUMP is.

I'll say it once again, Trump would be worth much more money today if he'd taken his daddy's money and simply invested in indexed linked funds. The notion that he is a successful business man is totally false.

And this failure is despite Trump's *apparently/allegedly* property investments tied to massive amounts of dirty foreign money.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/21/how-russian-money-helped-save-trumps-business/

https://newrepublic.com/article/143586/t...crime-syndicate

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/t...c94f_story.html

https://www.ft.com/trumptoronto

https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-inc-podcast-deutsche-bank-donald-trump

No. Flat tax. Everyone pays the same. Once you put on different rates and rules for different people, you start the whole lobbying/loophole game again.

No more penalizing people for being successful.

If he claimed $73 million on a refund that is looking pretty shady if they are investigating, he should be in jail.

This was one of my biggest takeaways from the article. I'm not sure how many people read the report in it's entirety.

The fact that Trump has $421M in debt that he has personally guaranteed and the bill is about to come due and he has no ability to pay it back is a risk to national security.

I see why many generals and other higher ups in national security that have served under him are banging the drum that Trump is a national security risk.

As for not paying any federal income taxes in several years and only paying $750 in others is an outlier when it comes to wealthy individuals as pertains to tax records. From this article....

This tax avoidance sets him apart from most other affluent Americans.

Taxes on wealthy Americans have declined sharply over the past few decades, and many use loopholes to reduce their taxes below the statutory rates. But most affluent people still pay a lot of federal income tax.

In 2017, the average federal income rate for the highest-earning .001 percent of tax filers — that is, the most affluent 1/100,000th slice of the population — was 24.1 percent, according to the I.R.S.

Over the past two decades, Mr. Trump has paid about $400 million less in combined federal income taxes than a very wealthy person who paid the average for that group each year.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/27/us/trump-taxes-takeaways.html

The $73M tax refund is still under investigation per the report...

... His total federal income tax refund would eventually grow to $70.1 million, plus $2,733,184 in interest. He also received $21.2 million in state and local refunds, which often piggyback on federal filings.

Whether Mr. Trump gets to keep the cash, though, remains far from a sure thing.

Refunds require the approval of I.R.S. auditors and an opinion of the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, a bipartisan panel better known for reviewing the impact of tax legislation. Tax law requires the committee to weigh in on all refunds larger than $2 million to individuals.

Records show that the results of an audit of Mr. Trump’s refund were sent to the joint committee in the spring of 2011. An agreement was reached in late 2014, the documents indicate, but the audit resumed and grew to include Mr. Trump’s returns for 2010 through 2013. In the spring of 2016, with Mr. Trump closing in on the Republican nomination, the case was sent back to the committee. It has remained there, unresolved, with the statute of limitations repeatedly pushed forward.

Precisely why the case has stalled is not clear. But experts say it suggests that the gap between the sides remains wide. If negotiations were to deadlock, the case would move to federal court, where it could become a matter of public record.

The dispute may center on a single claim that jumps off the page of Mr. Trump’s 2009 tax return: a declaration of more than $700 million in business losses that he had not been allowed to use in prior years. Unleashing that giant tax-avoidance coupon enabled him to receive some or all of his refund.

The material obtained by The Times does not identify the business or businesses that generated those losses. But the losses were a kind that can be claimed only when partners give up their interest in a business. And in 2009, Mr. Trump parted ways with a giant money loser: his long-failing Atlantic City casinos.

After Mr. Trump’s bondholders rebuffed his offer to buy them out, and with a third round of bankruptcy only a week away, Mr. Trump announced in February 2009 that he was quitting the board of directors.

“If I’m not going to run it, I don’t want to be involved in it,” he told The Associated Press. “I’m one of the largest developers in the world. I have a lot of cash and plenty of places I can go.”

The same day, he notified the Securities and Exchange Commission that he had “determined that his partnership interests are worthless and lack potential to regain value” and was “hereby abandoning” his stake.

The language was crucial. Mr. Trump was using the precise wording of I.R.S. rules governing the most beneficial, and perhaps aggressive, method for business owners to avoid taxes when separating from a business.

A partner who walks away from a business with nothing — what tax laws refer to as abandonment — can suddenly declare all the losses on the business that could not be used in prior years. But there are a few catches, including this: Abandonment is essentially an all-or-nothing proposition. If the I.R.S. learns that the owner received anything of value, the allowable losses are reduced to just $3,000 a year.

And Mr. Trump does appear to have received something. When the casino bankruptcy concluded, he got 5 percent of the stock in the new company. The materials reviewed by The Times do not make clear whether Mr. Trump’s refund application reflected his public declaration of abandonment. If it did, that 5 percent could place his entire refund in question.

If the auditors ultimately disallow Mr. Trump’s $72.9 million federal refund, he will be forced to return that money with interest, and possibly penalties, a total that could exceed $100 million. He could also be ordered to return the state and local refunds based on the same claims.
...

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020...pgtype=Homepage

So, suspicion of a crime deserves jail time now. Welcome to the dem version of America, where you are presumed guilty and thrown in jail.

I don't disagree. We just have to find a balance.

I don't agree with talk about taxing at 70% over $10 mil as an example. To you and I, at least for me, $10 mil is a lot of money. In then world of big money, it really isn't.

You have to allow for reinvestment. If you don't, it has to be taken as income. You also have to allow for writing off losses.

I don't have the answers for this forum at this time, but we can find something that is fair for all, be it if you make $20K a year or $20mil a year.

I would be all for a flat tax of 10% of the first 50,000. 15% of the next 50,000. 20% of the next 100,000. 25 percent of the next 300,000 and 30% of any amount over 500,000 per year. BUT we would also have to drop all other taxes. No property tax, no gas tax, no sales tax, no state income tax, no hidden taxes like Electricity or natural gas tax, Cable tax, phone taxes, Cigarette tax, alcohol tax. They would also need to drop all "Fees" that they tack on in place of taxes.

I don't know exactly how those numbers work -- but I think it is generally a good idea to get rid of ticky-tack consumption taxes, which are often regressive.

They only seem ticky- tack until you add them all up which nobody ever does since they don't even know about half of them.

lmao Swish had like 12 of the first 13 posts in this thread, all ignored.


Anyone surprised by this is a nonce. The rich very rich don't pay taxes.

I also think that the years leading up to the election he was getting his ass handed to him, so what exactly are they taxing? How do you tax catastrophic losses and bankruptcies?

Yes - I agree, that is the point I was making.

Also - because they tend to charge things that you **need** to survive at a consumption rate -- they hit the poorest Americans the hardest.

How was it ignored?

All I did was highlight some of the juicy bits of the article the OP posted.

Also, you just responded.

Also, while the trump supporters love trying to move the goal post in a pathetic attempt to own the libs, they forget that one if the BIGGEST reasons they told every they support him is due to his business track record.

But let’s be clear here: they called him successful because of The Apprentice. BpG and all the other cult members couldn’t actually point to anything trump did himself that was wildly successful.

The vast majority of us on the left knew the tax returns wasn’t gonna show anything illegal, although this ongoing issue with a 72 mill tax refund is something hilarious.

The sad reality is that it was way deeper than that. The tax returns was going to show how much debt and income he has.

More importantly, this news shows that trump isn’t worth anything close to what he claimed. It showed that anything trump ran on his own was a complete disaster. His “success” in business came from OTHER people running the show and slapping his name on it.

In football terms, He was a draft pick cashing in on endorsements before everybody realized he’s a bust.

What this has shown me, combined with trump supporters responses, is that yes, he can absolutely shoot someone on 5th ave and still have support.

Because it’s not about trumps accomplishments or qualifications. It never was.

It’s about the fact that they see themselves in him. He says all the racist, bigoted crap they wish they can say out loud but can’t. And they love it.

Look at all the evidence, folks. These trump supporters love right wing authoritarianism. It’s why they listen to tucker Carlson so much. It could be shown that trump is beyond broke and leveraged his position as president to make a profit (oh wait, that’s already been proven), and they won’t care.

No he didn't. Here's what he did do. There are approximately 500 members of Mar-a-Lago. As soon as he was elected president he doubled the cost of membership from 100k per year to 200k per year. I mean having access to Pocapornstar has its price, right? As we all know, American tax dollars in the millions are spent to take him there, protect him there and give these members access to our president. As such he gained 50 million dollars a year on being president.

Not a bad haul.

And the worst part of this whole situation:

Trump could’ve simply released his tax returns like everyone else and been done with it. He could’ve released it in 2017 after he got sworn in, and people would’ve already blew it off by 2020.

Instead, he hides it, lies about it, and refuses to give any proof that he pays much of anything.

And when a politician does that, guess what happens?

Everybody comes up with their narratives on what’s going on. And because trump refuses to refute the points, all it does is give credence to the fact that he’s a financial scumbag.