Under our tax system, owning something is better than actually working at something. Madeline Marshall explains how the rich avoid paying taxes. A Vox video.
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In recent years, Donald Trump paid the IRS $750 in income tax, except in those years when he paid absolutely nothing, records obtained by the New York Times show. He apparently paid 200 times more in taxes to India and the Philippines than U.S. income tax in 2017.
He appears to have paid daughter Ivanka $750,000 in consulting fees while she was also an employee of the Trump Organization. His claim about an IRS audit seems to hinge on his questionable $73 million tax refund in 2010 — a refund to someone who paid no taxes. His charitable write-offs consisted of not developing properties he owns. Mr. Trump’s responds to these revelations by repeatedly whining that”the IRS treats me very badly,”
“Donald Trump’s financial records are the Rosetta stone for understanding the depth of his corruption and crimes,” former Trump attorney Michael Cohen told Yahoo News:
“The more it is unraveled, the more he will unravel. It’s the reason he’s fought so hard to keep it under wraps.”
“His biggest fear is … he will end up with a massive tax bill, fraud penalties, fines, and possibly even tax fraud ….”
More:
“Long-Concealed Records Show Trump’s Chronic Losses and Years of Tax Avoidance,” Russ Buettner, Susanne Craig and Mike McIntire, New York Times
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Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.
Donald Trump paid no personal income taxes for 18 years by deducting the $916,000,000 he lost in 1995, reported the New York Times in a story based on leaked information from state tax returns. To do this Mr. Trump had to forgo the depreciation deductions on his properties, which included his Atlantic City casinos. Donald Trump formed a public corporation and funded his casinos with securities he sold to ordinary investors impressed with his celebrity and a promise of 14 percent interest who were unaware of the tax burden The Donald had imposed on the properties by taking personal deductions on them. As the company collapsed and the bond value plummeted 70 percent, the CEO paid himself a $5 million bonus and bought a private jet. So much for Mr. Trump’s sense of “fiduciary duty.”
As Drew Harwell explained in the Washington Post:
“Many of those who lost money were Main Street shareholders who believed in the Trump brand, such as Sebastian Pignatello, a retired private investor in Queens. By the time of the 2004 bankruptcy, Pignatello’s 150,000 shares were worth pennies on the dollar.
‘He had been pillaging the company all along,’ said Pignatello, who joined shareholders in a lawsuit against Trump that has since been settled. ‘Even his business allies, they were all fair game. He has no qualms about screwing anybody. That’s what he does.’”
Starbucks makes billions in the British Isles but reduced its UK tax bill to near zero by using accounting tricks that, while arguably legal, are avoided by good corporate citizens, including other U.S. chain eateries. Brits were outraged, and boycotts were organized. At first, Starbucks responded to the bad publicity by cutting employee lunchbreaks and sick leave, but finally made a voluntary token payment. Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal scolded the java giant for caving in to the Twittering mob.
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Short Link: http://wp.me/p6sb6-fbo
Image (“Urban Breakfast, after William Harnett”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.
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