Raise your hand if you’ve paid more in income taxes in the past year than Donald Trump paid in his first two years as president.
According to a new exposé from the New York Times, Trump has paid $1,500 in income taxes since he took office, and that he hadn’t paid income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years. Mind you, this does not count taxes toward Social Security and Medicare. So how does a supposed billionaire pay virtually nothing in taxes?
Most of Trump’s businesses were reported to have lost more money than they gained, and you can’t be taxed on money you don’t have. From 2000-18, Trump-run businesses had a net loss of over $174 million. In fact, it appears the only lucrative businesses bearing Trump’s name are the ones he has no control over. Several foreign hotels bought naming rights: Trump didn’t have to make a monetary investment in the hotel — just allow his name to be put on the tower — and he got a percentage of their profits.
So, Trump is either the world’s worst businessman … or America’s most effective serial tax avoider.
To put it as simply as possible, Trump also took advantage of every tax loophole in existence and then some. He was able to transfer tax credit for $1 billion losses in the 1990s to income made in the early 2000s. But The Apprentice brought him $427 million in profit, and from 2005 to 2008, Trump paid about $70 million in taxes. Then the Great Recession hit. A loophole in the Great Recession recovery act let Trump make claims on income as far back as 2005 and Trump received a $72.9 million refund from the government — which nullified all the taxes Trump had paid and put money back in his pocket.
Remember that IRS audit we’ve been hearing about for four years? Apparently said audit is over the legitimacy of this $72.9 million refund.
Trump has also had some questionable tax deductions over the last 10 years. (And we’re not talking about hairstyling expenses). From 2010-18, Trump wrote off about 20% of nearly every project he worked on as “consulting fees” — totaling around $26 million. Miraculously, many of those fees match — to the dollar — payments made to Ivanka Trump. Key contractors on multiple projects went on record that there were no third-party consultants on projects for which such fees were paid.
In short, Trump doesn’t pay his taxes, which isn’t really “news” in the sense that most people have already figured that out. Trump’s money scandals — tax related and otherwise — have been making the headlines for years. The New York Times reported on it in 2019 and that same year, Michael Cohen ratted Trump out in front of Congress. In 2015, Trump Taj Mahal was fined $10 million for “willful and repeated violations of the Bank Secrecy Act.” In other words, for allowing dirty money to be laundered through the casino. And there have been multiple scandals regarding Trump using his own properties for government business, and lobbyists and dignitaries staying at Trump resorts to curry favor. None of this is a secret.
For those who have already made up their minds about Trump, this will likely do little to sway them one way or another. But for the people who are unsure, consider this: Trump has lived on American taxpayers’ dollars for the past four years, even though he has gotten more money back from the government — which is funded by our money — than he has given it.
