Bombshell report shows Trump’s years of tax avoidance
President Trump paid just $750 in taxes in 2016 and the same sum in 2017, according to a bombshell New York Times report published Sunday.
He paid a big fat zero in income tax in 10 of the 15 previous years, the publication found.
The report appears to go a long way toward solving a big mystery of the Trump story, namely, just how rich is the self-proclaimed billionaire?
Tax records obtained by the Times show he “takes in hundreds of millions of dollars a year yet racks up chronic losses that he aggressively employs to avoid paying taxes.”
The article notes the tax returns just reflect what he was willing to disclose to the IRS and don’t suggest any new links to Russia, a long-standing subject of speculation given the Mueller investigation and Trump’s public admiration of Russian strongman Vladimir Putin.
What the tax returns do show is that Trump’s "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 Times reported.
A lawyer for the Trump Organization went into spin mode over the report.
“Over the past decade, President Trump has paid tens of millions of dollars in personal taxes to the federal government, including paying millions in personal taxes since announcing his candidacy in 2015,” Alan Garten said in a statement to the Times.
But the article noted Garten appeared to be mixing up income taxes with “other federal taxes Mr. Trump has paid — Social Security, Medicare and taxes for his household employees.”
True to form, Trump on Sunday dismissed the report as “fake news.”
“I’ve paid a lot and I’ve paid a lot of state taxes, too,” he said at a White House press conference.
He refused to answer reporters' questions asking how much he paid.
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