He's been on a "decades long vacation" since birth.
If you google vacuous there's a photo of him staring back at you.
They refuse to admit Obama's administration documents prove what I have said. They consider Obama above the law and that disqualifies them from discussing rule of law or accountability.
The Times, in a news story published Sunday evening that disclosed years of the president’s tax returns, also put a lot of clothing on things we didn’t know. Trump paid just $750 in federal income taxes in 2016, the year he was elected president, and the same amount the following year, when he entered the White House. In many years recently he hasn’t paid anything at all. He has played so fast and loose with the taxman that he’s entangled in an audit. He paid his daughter Ivanka lush consulting fees that he deducted as a business expense even though she helped him manage the Trump Organization. And he’s taken questionable tax write-offs on everything from getting his hair coifed to managing his personal residences.
Step away from the tragicomic tawdriness and grift that the tax returns define, however, and focus on what they reveal about Trump as the most powerful man in the world and occupant of the Oval Office.
Due to his indebtedness, his reliance on income from overseas and his refusal to authentically distance himself from his hodgepodge of business, Trump represents a profound national security threat – a threat that will only escalate if he’s re-elected. The tax returns also show the extent to which Trump has repeatedly betrayed the interests of many of the average Americans who elected him and remain his most loyal supporters.
Trump pays little tax
The Times reported that Trump paid no federal income taxes in 11 of 18 years the newspaper looked at. In 2017, after he became president, his tax bill was only $750. This is despite Trump often railing against taxes in America and ushering through a series of tax cuts that critics say mostly helps the rich and big business.
Barack Obama and George W Bush each regularly paid more than $100,000 a year.
A long audit – with potentially hefty costs
Trump is involved in a decade-long audit with the Internal Revenue Service over a $72.9m tax refund he claimed, and received, after declaring huge losses. A ruling against him could cost him more than $100m, the Times reported.
It added: “In 2011, the IRS 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.”
Ivanka helps reduce Trump’s tax burden
The president’s oldest daughter, while working as an employee of the Trump Organization, appears to have received “consulting fees” that helped reduce the family’s tax bill, the Times said. Such a revelation might further tarnish the reputation of Ivanka, a senior White House adviser married to another, Jared Kushner, who often tries to distance herself from some of the biggest scandals of her father’s administration. She is widely believed to harbor political ambitions of her own after Trump leaves office.
The Times reported: “Trump’s private records show that his company once paid $747,622 in fees to an unnamed consultant for hotel projects in Hawaii and Vancouver, British Columbia. Ivanka Trump’s public disclosure forms – which she filed when joining the White House staff in 2017 – show that she had received an identical amount through a consulting company she co-owned.”
Trump businesses lose money
The Times was brutal in its assessment of Trump’s businesses, about which he often boasts and on the back of which he sought to promote a carefully curated image as a master businessman. “Trump’s core enterprises – from his constellation of golf courses to his conservative-magnet hotel in Washington – report losing millions, if not tens of millions, of dollars year after year,” the newspaper said.
It detailed how since 2000, Trump has reported losing more than $315m at his golf courses, with much of that coming from Trump National Doral in Florida. His Washington hotel, which opened in 2016 and has been the subject of much speculation regarding federal ethics laws, has lost more than $55m.
Trump has a big bill to pay
The newspaper also reported that Trump is facing a major financial bill, as within the next four years, hundreds of millions of dollars in loans will come due. The paper said Trump is personally responsible for many of those obligations.
The paper reported: “In the 1990s, Mr Trump nearly ruined himself by personally guaranteeing hundreds of millions of dollars in loans, and he has since said that he regretted doing so. But he has taken the same step again, his tax records show. He appears to be responsible for loans totaling $421m, most of which is coming due within four years.”
In a blunt summary of the problem, the Times speculated: “Should he win re-election, his lenders could be placed in the unprecedented position of weighing whether to foreclose on a sitting president.”
At least trump has somewhere to go if he loses the election, for his great service to Russia...
But yes, Russia's SVR will be very proud of trump's work for them.
Trump has been tougher on Russia than Obama ever was. Obama's famous hot mic slip up shows who was in Russia's pocket and it is not Trump. It has been exposed as a hoax and there are still idiots who believe there is something to it when it was entirely contrived.
A huge failure by Obama and his band of above the law assholes that include the top ranks of the FBI, DOJ, and CIA. And the media was complicit by reporting lies, that were never, and could never be proven.
I take that's why Putin wanted trump to win in 2016, and wants him to win in 2020? And I'm going to be the next pope too pinky
You can't prove that, so why say it? Putin would have preferred Clinton because she would sell out America. Don't fool yourself thinking anything different. Putin said Clinton would be easy to manipulate.
If you wish to pursue a fantasy go right ahead, but I will call it out for the garbage and debunked narrative it is.
This is a fine example of the "fake news" you want to see...
Bloomberg conclusion on looking at the NYT article. No one at Bloomberg has seen Trump's tax returns. Until the NYT prints them, I will assume it's made up and a lie.
New York Times’ Trump Tax Return ‘Bombshell’ Is A Joke
Quote:
The Story Is a Flop
Turning to the particulars of the tax return, there simply isn’t much here. There’s certainly no smoking gun, nothing that on its face is illegal in some way. The portrait that emerges is one of a very aggressive, wheeler-dealer businessman with a thousand fingers in a thousand pies. Trump allocates money in a wide array of business ventures, generating tax deductions that offset income from these and other enterprises.
Trump himself in the piece describes his approach as “truthful hyperbole,” which is one of those wonderful phrases like “trust but verify,” “non-denial denial,” and “unknown unknowns.” In this case, the phrase tells me, as someone who has had all sorts of tax clients over the years, that the president loves the game. He is always looking for his next business venture and wants to plow all his profits from other lines of work into the next chapter of his life.
Not surprisingly, a business empire run this way robs a lot of profitable Peters to pay a lot of unprofitable Pauls. The New York Times article throws around terms that sound tricky or scary to normal people, but to tax professionals are part of any business tax return — depreciation, amortization, business bad debt, net operating losses, passive losses, historic rehabilitation credits, consulting fees, and the like. The bottom line is that the Trump business empire is basically a closed circuit — profits from business A are used to prop up business B and acquire business C. That creates a lot of deductions that offset the profit, which in turn means that in some years, very little tax is owed.
Does that make Trump a tax cheat? Not by itself, certainly. The IRS or other tax authorities are of course free to challenge the legality of this capital loss or that consulting expense, but that’s a matter of analyzing facts and circumstances case by case. There’s nothing wrong with taking these deductions in and of themselves. These types of news stories tend to cherry-pick particular tax years and tax deductions that fit the narrative and ignore high tax payment years that do not. Remember that the next time you see a screaming headline that “Evil Company X Paid Nothing in Taxes Last Year.” It’s almost certainly a truthful lie.
