The New York Times obtained President Trump’s tax information “extending over more than two decades, revealing struggling properties, vast write-offs, an audit battle and hundreds of millions in debt coming due.” “He had paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years — largely because he reported losing much more money than he made.” “As the president wages a re-election campaign that polls say he is in danger of losing, his finances are under stress, beset by losses and hundreds of millions of dollars in debt coming due that he has personally guaranteed. Also hanging over him is a decade-long audit battle with the Internal Revenue Service over the legitimacy of a $72.9 million tax refund that he claimed, and received, after declaring huge losses. An adverse ruling could cost him more than $100 million.” “The tax returns that Mr. Trump has long fought to keep private tell a story fundamentally different from the one he has sold to the American public. His reports to the I.R.S. portray a businessman who takes in hundreds of millions of dollars a year yet racks up chronic losses that he aggressively employs to avoid paying taxes. Now, with his financial challenges mounting, the records show that he depends more and more on making money from businesses that put him in potential and often direct conflict of interest with his job as president.”
This all means nothing. People will just point to Amazon et. al. doing the same thing. Nothingburger.
October surprises are gonna be lit! But seriously, the cultists won't care they fell for a con-man. It is, after all, harder to convince someone's been cheated than to cheat them in the first place.
Don't hate the player, hate the game. This is how it works. You can depreciate commercial & residential real estate over 39 and 27.5 years. So lets say you build a giant residential skyscraper which costs $500m. This lets you deduct $18.1 million off profits you made each year you own the building. So lets say after 10 years you sell the property for $700m. You now owe $200m in capital gains + $181m in depreciation recapture for a total of $381m in taxes owed. But you can defer this with a 1031 exchange if you buy another building of equal or greater value. This is all normal well known real estate law. It's not like Trump did a secret deal and hid money in the caymens. Nothing nefarious here. And Trump owns billions of dollars in commercial real estate real estate. If Trump owns $10 billion in real estate, then Trump could make $256m-$363m in profits in all his business and still not pay taxes. It doesn't mean he's losing money.
Ok, so how about his loss making operations in golf, hotels, etc? Is the strategy lose money = win? (Sounds like something out of WSB.) The attempts to explain away this are hilarious. If rich people pay next to no taxes in the US (as your logic would dictate, veracity left aside) then maybe it's time to change the rules? And definitely not with chief tax evader and loss maker extraordinaire Trump in charge.
I didn't say rich people pay next to no taxes. I simply explained the tax benefits of real estate of which is Trumps primary business. Trump pays a ton of taxes, just little to no federal income taxes. I bet Trump pays over $100m in property taxes every year at least.