Dearth & Taxes: Trump By the Numbers
After years of anticipation, FPOTUS's tax returns were finally released to the public in December. Since then, crickets. Why has this story gone away?
“Today would be a good day for Donald Trump to release his taxes.”
The Mother Jones journalist David Corn would tweet that out regularly during the four years of the Trump presidency, so much so that it became a running joke on Twitter. Trump had famously promised to release his taxes, blaming his inability to do so not on his own cowardice but on that time-honored boogeyman, the IRS. Faceless bureaucrats there were conducting an audit on his returns, he claimed, and therefore, even thought he would “love” to do so, he could not reveal them to the American people.
The IRS audit wound up outlasting his presidency. And Trump did not make good on his promise to show his taxes, just like he did not make good on his promise to show his medical reports, just like he did not make good on his promise to show his wife’s immigration documents, just like he did not make good on his promise to release the details of his healthcare plan. His taxes became a sort of journalistic Holy Grail. Why would he go to such lengths to hide them if they did not contain hard evidence of criminality? Money laundering, debt forgiveness to Russian oligarchs, outright fraud—anything was possible. And the answer, many of us believed, would be contained in the tax returns.
Rachel Maddow had the first peek:
But what she produced, alas, was closer to Al Capone’s vault than Al Capone’s tax evasion.
It was not until September 27, 2020 that the investigative reporters Russ Buettner, Susanne Craig and Mike McIntire got the real scoop. The New York Times had somehow acquired more than 20 years of returns, and an exclusive report, “LONG-CONCEALED RECORDS SHOW TRUMP’S CHRONIC LOSSES AND YEARS OF TAX AVOIDANCE,” was the result of their investigation. What the reporters discovered was that Trump, at least on paper, was closer to bankrupt than billionaire.
The key NYT finding—and probably the main reason Trump didn’t want anyone sniffing around his returns—was that the then-reality TV star had received a refund of a whopping $72.9 million in 2009, a year he claimed losses of some $700 million. There are legitimate reasons he was able to do that, reasons related to changes in the tax code that year made by his nemesis, President Obama. But that single deft piece of, ahem, ledger-demain is likely the reason for the interminable IRS audit.
There is good reason for great care. The audit is essentially the agency appealing his brash accounting trick. The wrong outcome could break him. As the Times puts it, “If the auditors ultimately disallow Mr. Trump’s $72.9 million federal refund, he will be forced to return that money with interest, and possibly penalties, a total that could exceed $100 million. He could also be ordered to return the state and local refunds based on the same claims.”
As best as I can tell, the issue remains unresolved. The IRS has apparently not decided one way or the other what to do with Trump’s audacious write-off. A piece by the Associated Press published three months ago indicates the matter is still up in the air, and includes this quote:
“What happened?” said Steven Rosenthal, senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. “If it was not resolved, the IRS stalled. If it was resolved in Trump’s favor, then maybe the IRS rolled over and played dead. That’s what we have to find out.”
(Chances are, Trump will get away with it. He’s made a career of getting away with things like this.)
More than two years after the Times exclusive, Trump’s taxes were finally released to the public—not by FPOTUS, but by the House Ways and Means Committee. It was a long time coming. In its report, the Committee found that the IRS did not exactly approach the Trump tax audit with anything approaching urgency.
Neither, it must be said, has the press. After years of David Corn tweets, late-night monologue jokes, and prevarication and dissembling by Trump himself, the taxes were finally dumped in late December of last year. The release was clumsy, and the documents were not as easy to find as they should have been. But they are now readily available for download at Wikipedia.
After an initial frenzy of news stories, I have not heard boo about Trump’s taxes in months. Are we all waiting for the IRS to render a decision? Are teams of forensic accountant still working through the mountains of paper? Was the whole thing a red herring?
Even if there is no smoking gun, the taxes reveal much about the character of FPOTUS. It does not require a CPA to understand that Trump is not the billionaire he claims to be, that his returns are filled with brazen write-offs, that he regularly stiffs lenders and vendors, that his charitable contributions are a joke, and that he will go to great lengths to avoid paying taxes—in other words, that he wants no part of subsidizing the greater good or helping anyone other than himself.
In short, his taxes are an indictment of Donald Trump—as of this writing, the only indictment we have.
When the Times bombshell dropped two and a half years ago, I wrote a Twitter thread around the dollar amounts mentioned in the story, in the style of Harper’s Index. I’ve added a few things we’ve learned since, and made some edits, and am reprinting it here:
-$915,700,000
Losses Trump claimed on his tax returns in 1995.
-$315,600,000
Losses from Trump’s golf courses since 2000.
-$55,500,000
Losses from Trump’s Washington, D.C. hotel, 2016-18.
-$47,400,000
Losses Trump claimed on his tax returns in 2018.
-$32,190,169
Total income shown on line 22 of the individual 1040 tax return for Donald & Melania Trump in 2016, the year he ran for president.
-$31,736,841
Total income shown on line 22 of the individual 1040 tax return for Donald & Melania Trump in 2015, the year before he ran for president.
-$12,819,400
Total income shown on line 22 of the individual 1040 tax return for Donald & Melania Trump in 2017, the year he was inaugurated as president.
-$3,800,000
Losses from Miss Universe Pageant, 2014.
-$2,000,000
Losses from Miss Universe Pageant, 2012.
$0
Amount Trump paid in federal income tax in 10 of the years from 2005-2020.
$750
What Trump paid in federal taxes in 2017.
$15,598
What Trump paid in taxes to Panama in 2017.
$47,398
Amount the Trump campaign owes the city of Eau Claire for expenses related to a political rally.
$65,124
Amount the Trump campaign owes the city of Spokane for expenses related to a political rally.
$70,000
Amount paid to style his “hair” when he was at The Apprentice.
$81,837
Amount the Trump campaign owes the city of Tucson for expenses related to a political rally.
$109,433
What Trump wrote off as expenses for “silver and linens” at Mar-a-Lago in 2017.
$130,000
What Trump paid in “hush money” to Stormy Daniels.
$145,400
What Trump paid in taxes to India in 2017.
$156,824
What Trump paid in taxes to the Philippines in 2017.
$480,000
Salary earned by Junior, Eric & Ivanka via the family business.
$530,000
Amount the Trump campaign owes the city of Minneapolis for expenses related to a political rally.
$569,204
Amount the Trump campaign owes the city of El Paso for expenses related to a political rally.
$747,622
Consultant fees illegally paid to Ivanka Trump in 2017.
$1,900,000
Amount paid by Trump Org for Junior’s legal fees re: the Trump Tower meeting with the Russians. (Note: this is not a legitimate business expense).
$2,300,000
What Trump personally made in licensing fees from an Azeri oligarch with ties to Putin, for holding the Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow in 2013.
$13,000,000
Amount earned from Trump’s deals in Turkey.
$21,100,000
Charitable deduction claimed by Trump for owning a mansion in New York State.
$72,900,000
Amount of refund from the federal government Trump received that has been in dispute for years.
$100,000,000
Approximate amount he will owe the federal government in back taxes if the IRS rules against him in dispute.
$125,000,000
Mortgage on Doral golf course (per the NYT, possibly due this year).
$287,000,000
Amount Trump stiffed lenders, 2010-2020.
$421,000,000
Amount in loans that are coming due in next two years that Trump has personally guaranteed.
$427,400,000
Revenue Trump earned from The Apprentice.
Sources:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Tax_returns_of_Donald_Trump
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/09/27/us/donald-trump-taxes.html?auth=login-google
What is also stunning is the fact he filed six federal bankruptcies based on these false figures and yet we have seen absolutely no repercussions for those criminal acts.
So if I pretend to be a billionaire, I'll be able to pay less tax? How he gets away with it all baffles me everyday! Ugh