What a Shocker! Donald Trump Has Paid No Taxes for 10 Years
The US President evaded taxes and what he has to say about it
The US President Donald Trump has not paid any federal income taxes in the last 10 years out of 15 before winning the Presidential elections as per a report published by The New York Times. Read on to know how the US President evaded taxes and what he has to say about it.
Donald Trump is interestingly the only President who is yet to make his tax returns public. As per the report, he paid just USD 750 (about AUD 1000) in federal taxes in 2016 and 2017. One of the strategies he adopted was to report losses across his entire business empire. He reported losses of USD 47.4 (about AUD 67.11) million in 2018 and reported an income of USD 434.9 (about AUD 615.72) million in the same year.
Donald Trump also reduced his tax payments by classifying the cost of his aircraft, his haircuts, and residences as business expenses. A smart strategy he adopted was to claim deductions worth over USD 70,000 (About AUD 99,103) for styling his hair when he hosted The Apprentice. He also evaded taxes by treating his daughter Ivanka as a consultant and paid her hundreds of thousands of dollars. He labelled it as a cost of doing business.
Talking about the revelations, The Times said that it obtained tax return data that goes back up to two decades for Donald Trump and his business empire. The personal returns from 2018 and 2019 are missing. Highlighting why it did not reveal the entire data by publishing it, The Times said that it wanted to protect the confidentiality of the resources of its reporters.
The Executive Director of The Times wrote this as a note to the readers. “We are publishing this report because we believe citizens should understand as much as possible about their leaders and representatives — their priorities, their experiences and also their finances.”
As you might have guessed, Donald Trump said that it was fake news and that the American public would see his returns only after IRS completed a decade long audit. The IRS Commissioner, however, stated that their audit was not preventing the records from being made public.
The NYT intends to similar publish reports soon. If that happens, it would be a mess for Donald Trump, who is already getting a lot of negative attention due to his efforts to stop TikTok use in the country and then selling it to Oracle.
