Report: Donald Trump Pays Less In Taxes Than People Living Below the Poverty Line, Most Likely Because He’s A Crook

According to the Times, the refund—and sit down because this is probably going to come as a shock— may not have been entirely above board. That’s because when Trump applied for it, he cited a huge financial loss that appears to be related to the failure of his Atlantic City casinos, which he publicly walked away from after a dispute with his bondholders, claiming that his partnerships interest were “worthless and lack potential to regain value.” Federal law states that investors can declare a total loss on an investment, as Trump did, but if an only if they receive absolutely nothing in return. And in the case of Trump, he did get something: 5 percent of the new casino that was created after he dumped his stake. Incidentally, when Trump claims that he can’t release his tax returns because he’s being audited, that’s only half true: as tax experts have said many times over the last four years, nothing, including an audit, would preclude him from releasing his returns. But, unlike most of the things that come out of Trump‘s mouth, in this case the audit wasn’t entirely made up:

In 2011, the I.R.S. began an audit reviewing the legitimacy of the refund. Almost a decade later, the case remains unresolved, for unknown reasons, and could ultimately end up in federal court, where it could become a matter of public record.

In addition to the giant losses and possibly-not-legit refund, Trump has also been able to, again, pay virtually nothing in federal income taxes by writing off virtually every aspect of his life as a business expense. That, according to the Times, has included flights between his homes, meals, and $70,000 worth of haircuts that, it has to be said, was not money well spent. He also classified his Westchester estate, Seven Springs, as an investment property, which allowed him to write off $2.2 million in property taxes since 2014, despite that (1) Eric Trump told Forbes that same year that the place is a family compound and (2) his blue-state punishing tax law limited other people from writing off only $10,000 a year in property taxes.

And then, of course, there are the consulting fees paid to Princess Purses:

Examining the Trump Organization’s tax records, a curious pattern emerges: Between 2010 and 2018, Mr. Trump wrote off some $26 million in unexplained “consulting fees” as a business expense across nearly all of his projects. In most cases the fees were roughly one-fifth of his income: In Azerbaijan, Mr. Trump collected $5 million on a hotel deal and reported $1.1 million in consulting fees, while in Dubai it was $3 million with a $630,000 fee, and so on. Mysterious big payments in business deals can raise red flags, particularly in places where bribes or kickbacks to middlemen are routine. But there is no evidence that Mr. Trump, who mostly licenses his name to other people’s projects and is not involved in securing government approvals, has engaged in such practices.