Trump’s tax returns tarnish his image as a successful entrepreneur

WASHINGTON—House Democrats released former President Donald Trump’s six-year tax record on Friday, offering new insights into his business dealings that further tarnish his long-cultivated image as a highly successful businessman. provided.

Friday morning’s release contained thousands of pages, including individual tax returns for Trump and his wife, Melania, as well as several business tax returns for the hundreds of companies that make up his sprawling business organisation. It included tax documents. This follows the release of a report from Democrats on the Ways and Means Committee that Trump paid a total of $1.1 million in federal income taxes in his first three years as president, but will pay $1.1 million in federal income taxes in 2020. showed that they did not pay taxes because their income decreased and their losses increased. .

The disclosure of the documents drew condemnation and threats of retaliation from Trump and his Republican supporters in Congress. He suggested he might try to disclose tax returns filed by judges and lawmakers.President Joe Biden’s family, including his son Hunter.

Sign up for the New York Times’ The Morning newsletter

The documents appeared to show that Trump violated his campaign promise to donate his salary as president at least in 2020. It suggested that changes, namely limits on deductions for state and local taxes paid, may have increased Trump’s tax bill.

In a statement on Friday, Trump blamed Democrats and said the decision to release the return was “weaponized.”

“‘Trump’ tax returns show how proud and successful I have been, using depreciation and various other tax credits as an incentive to create thousands of jobs and grand structures and corporations. We are showing again what we can do,” he wrote.

But the tax returns covering the 2015-2020 tax years don’t show much Trump’s success in recent business dealings. They show that Trump often reported huge losses from his own ventures, even as he continued to cash in on his inherited assets.

story continues

Trump’s history of inheriting wealth and then losing it was chronicled in 2020 by The New York Times, which got Trump’s decades of tax information, including much of what was disclosed on Friday.

In 2018, according to tax returns reviewed by The Times, President Trump reported more than $24 million in taxable income, a decade after the former president didn’t report any taxable income. He paid about $1 million in federal taxes, almost the entire amount he paid as president.

That income was the result of more than $14 million in gains from his father’s sale of Starlet City, a Brooklyn apartment complex in the 1970s, which became part of Trump’s legacy.

Much of what the commission released Friday was also revealed in a topline numbered report the commission released last week. Got an insight.

For example, documents show that the impact of his inheritance in 2018 was greater than what The Times had previously reported. Sale of Starlet City.

The sale of business properties that Trump himself created took a loss, but lowered net income and eased the tax burden somewhat, the tax breakdown shows. This included a total of $1 million in assets or equipment sold at a loss by his two entities, as well as his son Donald Trump’s bailout of his Jr. from a failed prefabricated home building business. It included his $1 million loss.

Trump also received tens of thousands of dollars in dividends while in the White House from a trust set up for him when he was younger, his tax returns show.

Tax returns are among the most private documents in the United States. Congress has the power to seize and release them, but it rarely takes such action.

After Trump broke with tradition and refused to release his report as a presidential candidate or while in office, Democratic lawmakers called for them over concerns of potential conflicts of interest. was able to use their supervisory powers to unlock them by investigating the Internal Revenue Service’s policy of auditing presidents and vice presidents.

The final release comes after years of legal battles and speculation about Trump’s wealth and his financial entanglements.

Democrats argue the disclosure is a necessary oversight of a president who has broken decades of precedent and refused to make his return public.

“Trump acted as if he was hiding something, which is consistent with a pattern of criminal tax fraud his family business was recently convicted of,” said a member of the Ways and Means Commission. said Rep. Donald Bayer (D-Va.). Friday news release. “As the general public can now see, Trump used questionable or poorly substantiated deductions to justify paying little to no federal income tax in the years investigated. , and many other tax avoidance schemes.”

But Republicans warned Democrats that they had set a dangerous precedent.

“From now on, every future chairman of both the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee will target private citizens, political opponents, business and labor leaders, and even the Supreme Court tax returns to the public almost. It has unlimited power, Texas Rep. Kevin Brady, the top Republican on the Ways and Means Commission, said in a statement preceding the report.

Trump also raised the threat of retaliation.

“The Democrats should never have done it, and the Supreme Court should never have approved it. It would be terrifying to so many people.”The great divide in America is now even worse. The Radical Left Democrats are weaponizing everything, but remember it’s a dangerous two-way street!”

As the 2015 presidential candidate, Trump said he would not take “one dollar” out of the $400,000 salary that comes with the job. It’s going to happen,’ he said.

President Trump said he donated his salary quarterly during his first three years in office. But in 2020, President Trump reported heavy business losses, no federal tax burden, and no charitable donations as the pandemic recession rapidly worsened in his final year in office. .

White House officials have previously highlighted which government agencies receive Trump’s payroll, starting with the National Park Service in 2017. Trump reported charitable donations totaling about $1.9 million in 2017, according to tax documents released Friday. In both 2018 and 2019 he made $500,000.

The tax bill Trump signed into law in late 2017 and went into effect the following year appears to have had mixed results. Some of its provisions most likely favored him when taxing, including a reduction in the alternative minimum tax for high-income earners.

But the law also includes restrictions on so-called SALT deductions, which have disproportionately hit high-income earners, including Trump, in high-tax cities and states like New York.2019 , reported that Trump paid $8.4 million in state and local taxes. Because his tax law included his SALT limit, he could only deduct his $10,000 in taxes paid on his federal income tax return.

Trump’s returns are complex and spread across thousands of pages. Documents show that he switched accountants to edit them.

For years, Trump used accounting firm Mothers USA to prepare his taxes and business taxes. Donald Bender was long listed in the former president’s tax bill as his accountant.

The company formally cut ties with Trump and his business earlier this year, saying it could no longer support the annual financial statements it produced for the Trump Organization for a decade.

But it turns out that Mazars and Trump began to distance themselves from each other in 2020. Texas-based accounting firm BKM Sowan Horan prepared Trump’s taxes that year, his filing shows.

The documents also raise new questions about audits Trump has faced in and out of office.

In last week’s report, Ways and Means Democrats downplayed the impact of a long pending audit dating back to 2009 on audits during the Trump presidency. A report by the bipartisan Joint Taxation Commission, which analyzes congressional tax policy, said an audit of Trump’s 2015 returns was due to the “complexity of the issues simultaneously grappling with the 2009-2013 tax year.” pointed out that the

The report does not disclose the content of audits from 2009 to 2013. But a 2020 Times study found that Trump requested and received a total of $72.9 million in income tax refunds that year, from 2005 to 2008, plus interest.

The alleged refund appears to be based on Trump giving up his stake in the casino business that year. This is known as “expedited refund” because the taxpayer receives it immediately without any questions, but triggers an automatic audit. In Trump’s case, the audit was not resolved by the time he took office.

The commission’s report released last week did not directly address whether the outstanding issues from 2009 to 2013 delayed subsequent investigations under the president’s mandatory audit program. However, the IRS often does not initiate or complete new audits when there are complex, unresolved disputes from the past few years.

Stephen M. Rosenthal, who once worked as a staff member of the Joint Taxation Commission, said the IRS likely decided that no new audits should begin until old issues were resolved.

“It’s a big mistake that’s easy to criticize,” said Rosenthal, now a senior fellow at the bipartisan Urban Brookings Center for Tax Policy.

© 2022 New York Times Company