A New York Times investigation published on Sunday found that President Trump paid just $750 in federal income taxes each year in 2016 and in 2017, which the president denied at a news conference using a familiar retort: "fake news."
The Times cites Trump's long sought-after tax returns, further reporting that he paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years, as Trump reported massive losses to his businesses.
Among its other findings, the investigation determined that Trump has hundreds of millions of dollars in loans that are set to come due within the next four years — potentially his second term in office — and that he's battling the Internal Revenue Service over a nearly $73 million tax refund he claimed a decade ago. The Times said an "adverse ruling [in that audit case] could cost him more than $100 million."
All told, the investigation provides the most detailed accounting yet of the finances of a president with massive business interests who's sought to shield the details of those finances from the American public.
NPR has not confirmed any of the details from the filings; the Times didn't post any of its source documents to protect sources, according to the story.
When asked about the report during a Sunday evening news conference, Trump refused to detail what he's paid in federal income taxes, saying simply: "I've paid a lot."
He said "it'll all be revealed" when his tax returns can be released after audit — something he's said for years. (In fact, an audit would not prevent the president from releasing his records.)
Trump has previously bragged about not paying taxes.
"That makes me smart," he said in a 2016 debate against Hillary Clinton, when she accused him of not paying federal income taxes.
Responding to the Times, Alan Garten, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, told the publication that "most, if not all, of the facts appear to be inaccurate."
The Times says it obtained over 20 years of tax return data for Trump and the myriad companies that make up his organization.
Here are other key findings of the New York Times:
- Some reductions in the president's tax liability came from unexplained consulting fees. The Times cites evidence that some of the fees may have been paid to his daughter, Ivanka Trump, though she was not an outside figure, given her role as a top official in the Trump Organization. If that were true, it could create further legal peril.
- Trump's long-running IRS audit stems from a refund he claimed in 2010 totaling $72.9 million, which appears to be based on a questionable move by the president to claim he was walking away from his Atlantic City casino business.
- More than $70,000 paid to style Trump's hair for his former reality show The Apprentice was written off on his taxes as a business expense. He's also written off costs related to residences and aircraft that many would consider personal expenses.
- The president's businesses have brought in lots of money from overseas, detailed precisely for the first time in this report, according to the Times. In his first two years in the White House, Trump earned $73 million from overseas, mostly from his golf courses in the British Isles. He also earned millions from the Philippines, India and Turkey.
- Trump and his companies paid taxes of $15,598 in Panama, $145,400 in India and $156,824 in the Philippines in 2017, one of the years the report says Trump paid just $750 in income taxes to the U.S. government.
The Times report was explicit that it did not find any previously unknown connections to Russia, something that critics of the president have speculated would be revealed in his tax returns.
Trump's political opponents for years have sought his personal financial records, after he broke decades of presidential precedent by not voluntarily releasing his tax returns during the 2016 campaign or since.
Trump has also not divested from his family business, creating layers of financial entanglements and potential conflicts of interest, including business deals that could be subject to decisions by foreign leaders.
Last year, House Ways and Means Committee Chair Richard Neal, D-Mass., sued federal officials to try to obtain six years of Trump's tax returns. In July of this year, the Supreme Court sent the case back to a lower court.
"It appears that the President has gamed the tax code to his advantage and used legal fights to delay or avoid paying what he owes," Neal said in a statement Sunday evening. He added: "Our case is very strong, and we will ultimately prevail."
Donald Trump, a self-proclaimed billionaire, paid only $750 in federal income taxes in the year he was elected US president, according to a stunning New York Times investigation that could shake up the presidential election.
“Trump taxes show chronic losses and years of tax avoidance,” was the banner headline on the paper’s website on Sunday. The president’s tax returns have long been the holy grail of American political reporting.
The president “paid $750 in federal income taxes the year he won the presidency”, the paper reported, adding that “in his first year in the White House, he paid another $750.
“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.”
In all, the paper said, Trump paid no federal income taxes in 11 of 18 years its reporters examined. Many of his businesses, including his golf courses, report significant financial losses – which have helped him to lower his taxes.
The Times also said the documents it had obtained “comprise information that Mr Trump has disclosed to the IRS, not the findings of an independent financial examination. They report that Mr Trump owns hundreds of millions of dollars in valuable assets, but they do not reveal his true wealth. Nor do they reveal any previously unreported connections to Russia.”
The paper said it would not publish the documents, in order to protect its source.
At a White House press briefing on Sunday, Trump made wild allegations about plots against him and about Biden, who he will debate for the first time on Tuesday. Eventually, he dismissed the Times report as “totally fake news”.
He said: “We went through the same stories, you could have asked me the same questions four years ago, I had to litigate this and talk about it.
“Totally fake news, no. Actually I paid tax. And you’ll see that as soon as my tax returns – it’s under audit, they’ve been under audit for a long time. The [Internal Revenue Service] does not treat me well … they treat me very badly. You have people in the IRS – they treat me very badly.”
The president added: “The New York Times tried it, the same thing, they want to create a little bit of a story. They’re doing anything they can. That’s the least of it. The stories that I read are so fake, they’re so phony.”
Pressed on why a billionaire only paid a few hundred dollars in the year he won the presidency, Trump insisted: “First of all I paid a lot, and I paid a lot of state income taxes too. The New York state charges a lot and I paid a lot of money in state. It’ll all be revealed. It’s going to come out but after the audit.”
The revelations threaten to damage Trump’s repeated claim to be a successful businessman and therefore a capable steward of the US economy.
The Times also said he has used “questionable measures” to reduce his tax bill. He faced a possible hit of “more than $100m” if he lost “a decade-long audit battle with the IRS over the legitimacy of a $72.9m tax refund that he claimed, and received, after declaring huge losses”.
It promised more stories in the coming weeks, adding: “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.”
Trump will face Joe Biden at the polls on 3 November. He has long resisted demands by political opponents and the media to release decades of tax information. He is the first president since the 1970s to keep his tax returns concealed.
The Times reported on Trump family tax affairs in late 2018, winning a Pulitzer Prize.
“Even while declaring losses, he has managed to enjoy a lavish lifestyle by taking tax deductions on what most people would consider personal expenses, including residences, aircraft and $70,000 in hairstyling for television,” the Times reported on Sunday.
“Ivanka Trump, while working as an employee of the Trump Organization, appears to have received ‘consulting fees’ that also helped reduce the family’s tax bill.”
The paper added: “Over the past two decades, Mr Trump has paid about $400m less in combined federal income taxes than a very wealthy person who paid the average for that group each year.”
Alan Garten, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, told the Times that “most, if not all, of the facts appear to be inaccurate”.
He said: “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.”
The newspaper pointed out that “personal taxes” appeared to cover other federal taxes, including social security and Medicare.
The report prompted instant criticism. Ryan Thomas, a spokesperson for the progressive advocacy organisation Stand Up America, said: “Four years ago, Donald Trump broke decades of precedent when he refused to release his tax returns to the public. At each turn since, he’s attempted to shield his financial records from the public – even as congressional and criminal investigators look into how he’s profited off the presidency and his decades of fraudulent tax schemes.
“We’ve demanded Trump’s tax returns for years because the American people deserve to know what he’s paying – and the answer appears to be very little. A man who uses dubious tax schemes to avoid paying taxes or lies to the public about his finances has no place in the Oval Office.
“This is just one more reason why we must vote to evict him.”
/media/img/2020/09/22/WEL_Gellman_Election_0-7/original.png)
