Monday, September 28, 2020

$161,950 vs $0




https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/09/28/do-i-say-not-i-do-trumps-past-tax-commentary-is-cast-whole-new-light/

25 comments:

David in Cal said...

The Times headline is biased, as usual. According the Times's data, Trump's average income tax was indeed a huge figure. However, his taxes were highly erratic. The Times misleads its readers by focusing on years of low taxes.

Cheers

David Appell said...

The Times says Trump "paid $750 in federal income taxes in 2016, and nothing at all in 10 of the prior 15 years — largely because he lost so much money."

Nothing.

What did he pay in the five other years?

David Appell said...

David, I was thinking -- the NYT is a news organization. They publish what they deem to be the news. Trump not paying taxes for 10 of 15 years, and $750 for two recent years, is news. Trump can make his other payments known any time he wants by releasing his returns, like all other presidents since Nixon. That's not the responsibility of journalists.

Layzej said...

DiC: "Trump's average income tax was indeed a huge figure

Hi David In Cal. What was his average income tax over the last 20 years? If he paid nothing for 10/15 years prior to 2016, how much did he make since taking office that the average is "huge"?

David in Cal said...

David - I spent 10 years working for a subsidiary of Teledyne, which was headed by physicist Henry Singleton, of whom you may have heard. Subsidiaries had to report regularly to a meeting conducted by the management at Teledyne. If the head of a subsidiary had reported that his unit made profits in 10 of the last 15 years, he would have been soundly chewed out for dissembling. There's no valid reason to report on a cherry-picked subset of the period.

The Times has a legal right to spin the news, as they did. However, by doing so, they lose their right to be considered an honorable news source. BTW I don't even know for sure if the Times's figures area accurate. I don't trust Trump's integrity, nor do I trust the Times's integrity.

In answer to your question, another source pointed out that Trump paid something like $34 million in income tax in some year around 2005, if I recall correctly.

Cheers

David Appell said...

How did the NYT spin the news?

What source said Trump paid $34 M in 2005?

The NYT clearly has more integrity than Trump.

Why doesn't Trump release his tax returns?

Don't you think citizens have a responsibility to pay taxes for the government they consume?

What do you think of Trump making fun of Obama for paying 21% of his income in taxes when Trump likely paid nothing that year?

Trump owed $421 M payable within 4 years. Can he be trusted as president knowing this? I heard someone today say he'd never get a security clearance in this circumstance if he wasn't president. What deals will he cut and why?

David Appell said...

There's no valid reason to report on a cherry-picked subset of the period.

The NYT reports *NEWS*. They aren't Trump's accountant. Trump can make his full tax returns known any time he wants. Like tonight. He's lying that he can't because he's under audit.

David Appell said...

Teledyne didn't hold itself out as a rich mogul. Teledyne wasn't President of the United States.

Layzej said...

NPR has a 2017 story about a "leaked" tax return from 2005: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/03/14/520205373/trump-paid-about-38-million-in-federal-taxes-in-2005-leaked-returns-say

Has he been losing money since 2005???

David Appell said...

Has he been losing money since 2005???

Trump's companies have gone through four bankruptcies, one of them a casino(!).

https://www.snopes.com/news/2016/08/01/donald-trumps-bankruptcies/

At least 13 of his businesses have failed.

David in Cal said...

David - you ask how did the Times spin the story, when I had just explained how. Here's a physics example of the same thing:

Scientist invents a clock with a pendulum that is always in the same position 30 times in any minute.

BTW my local paper misreported the Times story with a headline saying Trump had paid no taxes "for years". The phrase "for years" would typically be understood as referring to a continuous period, not an intermittent group of years. The Times presentation invites this misunderstanding.

Cheers

David Appell said...

David, and as I told you, it's the Times job to report news, not provide a full accounting of Trump's tax returns. (Have you thought maybe the Times didn't have a full set of Trump's returns?) The Times indeed reported the interesting part that was news that interests people. Trump is free to provide the full accounting.

Why are you more concerned about what the Times didn't do than what Trump isn't doing?

David in Cal said...

David - No, it never occurred to me that the Times didn't have a continuous set of tax returns. In fact, I think they said they did have all the returns for some lengthy period. Even if they HAD been given a cherry-picked set of years, they should have said so.

As far as I can tell, there is no indication that Trump violated any tax laws. The laws on loss carry-forwards allow Trump to legally minimize his taxes. Apparently he did just that. If you don't like the tax law, don't blame Trump, blame Biden. He helped enact these laws.

Also, there's no indication that Trump had any involvement with Russia.

BTW Biden's huge earnings raise a question. In his career in government and his wife's career as a teacher, how did they become so wealthy?

However, none of this matters very much. We know Biden is a crook, because of his son's multi-million dollar payoff in Ukraine. That was obvious influence peddling. We know Trump failed at many endeavors. We know Trump has no concern about the truth. We know that Biden tells convenient lies as well, like his falsehood about attending a historically black college. However, none of these things says much of anything about how each of them will govern.

Cheers

J. D. said...

A quick Google would have told you how Biden made his money.

Biden didn't appoint his son to the position in Ukraine although its hard to see that he wasn't making money out of his father's name. That doesn't make his father a crook. OTOH Trump's nepotism is legendary.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/feb/11/facebook-posts/fact-checking-how-many-trump-relatives-and-friends/

You seem to be searching for reasons to be annoyed with the NYT for releasing Trump's tax details but they were only doing what Trump had promised to do and don't the American people deserve to know about Trump's conflicts of interest. There is no doubt that when Trump makes policy decisions that he is more interested in keeping his businesses afloat than looking after American interests. That involves putting close allies lives at risk in Syria because of his business interests in Turkey which he has admitted are a conflict of interest or American lives at risk because stricter pandemic measures would hurt his hotel busnisses.
The reason why any reasonable person would balk at putting Trump in charge of any more responsible position than managing a McDonald's though is because he's a sociopath. You've been given examples of how he sees everything through a prism of self-interest. The prime example is his superspreader rallies. They don't only speak volumes about Trump they speak volumes about his supporters. We are talking about a cult whose followers have lost contact with reality.
Republican politicians described Trump's mental issues to a tee before the last election. When they realized there was no way Trump's supporters would see reality most of them joined the cult rather than jumping off the gravy train they took the easy way out.

David in Cal said...

J.D. - Nepotism is entirely different from influence peddling.

Cheers

David Appell said...

David: Here are Biden's tax returns. You're free to look through them all you want:

https://joebiden.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/2019-Biden-Delaware-Virginia-Federal-3.pdf

How did anything Biden's son earned result in influence peddling? Be specific.

We know that Biden tells convenient lies as well, like his falsehood about attending a historically black college. However, none of these things says much of anything about how each of them will govern.

Are you kidding????

We know how Trump governs -- it's one lie after another, constantly, throughout the day. His administration is rife with corruption. This country is a wreck under him, a literal wreck. It's falling apart. It's chaos. And it's because of Trump. He hasn't done anything well. He's been a failure on all counts.

David Appell said...

David, you fell for another piece of conservative propaganda.

"No, Joe Biden did not say he attended Delaware State University," Natalia Alamdari, Delaware News Journal 9/29/20.

https://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/politics/2020/09/29/no-joe-biden-did-not-say-he-attended-delaware-state-university/3574205001/

Layzej said...

there's no indication that Trump had any involvement with Russia.

According to Trump's son: “We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.”

Layzej said...

It will be interesting to see how all this plays into Trump's alleged laundering of $170 million. Certainly the $400 million debt that's coming due helps explain why Trump would engage in such practices. I suspect we'll never know as long as Trump remains in office.

David Appell said...

Maybe. But someone leaked these 20 years of Trump tax returns, and as Trump gets ever more awful, others might be willing to leak more financial documents they have access to, to damage him. If he gets kicked out of office there may be less motivation to do that.

Then, Trump is being prosecuted by the Southern District of New York (a state court)....

Layzej said...

The laws on loss carry-forwards allow Trump to legally minimize his taxes. Apparently he did just that. If you don't like the tax law, don't blame Trump,

Why not? His tax reform removed the limit to the number of years you could carry forward debt.

David Appell said...

Wow, what a surprise.

Also, apparently he declared tens of millions of losses in consultancy fees to ... his own kids.

David Appell said...

Of course, my dad did that with all his kids too, so I can't really complain.

Layzej said...

How else would you pay for your $70,000 haircuts?

David Appell said...

political favors via dad?