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the New York Times published a large survey on the tax returns of the President of the United States, Donald Trump, covering a period of almost twenty years. The documents, which until now had never been released, show among other things that in 10 of the last 15 years the president has not paid any income tax, mainly thanks to the losses reported in the tax returns by his company , the Trump Organization. The documents also show that its finances are under pressure, due to hundreds of millions of dollars in accumulated debt and a ten-year dispute with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS, a government agency that deals with the collection of taxes) over the legitimacy of a $ 72.9 million tax refund that Trump obtained after declaring huge losses.
The journalistic investigation, signed by Russ Buettner, Susanne Craig and Mike McIntire, is particularly important because Trump is the first president since the 1970s who has not wanted to make his tax returns public (which is not required, but Forty Years does. all candidates do for transparency reasons). In addition, the great losses that arise from the documents contrast with the image that Trump has always wanted to give of himself, that is, that of a hugely successful entrepreneur.
Among other things, the investigation revealed that in 11 of the 18 years examined, Trump declared losses such that he paid no income taxes, while in another two years, in 2016 and 2017, he paid only $ 750 in taxes. . Trump, wrote the New York Times“He managed to avoid paying taxes while living a billionaire life, which he claims to be, while his companies have paid the costs of what many would consider personal expenses.” Over the past two decades, Trump would have paid about $ 400 million less in federal income taxes than someone as wealthy as the law would have to pay; and he also paid less in taxes than Barack Obama and George W. Bush, his two previous presidents, who paid more than $ 100,000 in federal taxes a year while in office.
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Over the years, Trump has come to pay low taxes, thus New York Times defined “questionable maneuvers”, including a tax refund of 72.9 million dollars that since 2011 is subject to verification by the Internal Revenue Service, the US consideration of the Tax Agency. The refund lowered her income tax between 2000 and 2017 to $ 1.4 million, far less than the $ 25 million in federal taxes calculated for the average American of similar wealth.
Trump has managed to pay little taxes even for the huge losses derived from some activities of the Trump Organization, a group of about 500 entities, almost all owned by Trump: since 2000, for example, Trump has lost more than 315 million dollars . of his golf course businesses, which he often described as the heart of his business empire. The losses have been so great that the Trump Organization can claim that it does not win and therefore has to pay less taxes.
The investigation also revealed how over the years Trump has considered much of his personal expenses as expenses borne by his companies, thus further reducing taxes: his residences, his golf courses, the plane he used to travel. from one house to another and haircuts are all expenses that have ended up in the company’s budgets.
The numerous “consulting fees” included in nearly every project launched by Trump over the years, defined by the New York Times very often “inexplicable”. The investigation revealed, for example, how Trump’s daughter Ivanka was the recipient of some of these consulting fees, despite being one of the most prominent leaders of the Trump Organization. Records obtained by the newspaper show that Trump’s company once paid $ 747,622 in commissions to an anonymous consultant for the construction of hotel projects in Hawaii and Vancouver, Canada; during the same period Ivanka Trump, daughter of the president, obtained an identical amount through a consulting firm of which she was co-owner.
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It also appears that Trump made money by becoming president by receiving large amounts of money from lobbyists, politicians and foreign officials willing to pay to stay in their properties or join their clubs. In his first two years in the White House, Trump received millions of dollars from various projects in foreign countries, including the Philippines (3 million), India (2.3 million) and Turkey (1 million). The documents obtained from the New York Times they show no connections to Russia that have not been made public before.
However, according to the investigation, Trump’s finances would be under great pressure, especially as many of his businesses remain at a loss and some significant late payments will be completed. If he loses the dispute with the IRS, Trump could also owe the federal government more than $ 100 million.
The director of the New York Times, Dean Baquet, wrote that his newspaper did not directly publish the documents cited in the investigation “in order not to endanger” their sources “, who took enormous risks to inform the public opinion.” Baquet added that the investigation was carried out so that citizens had as much information as possible about their leaders and representatives, “about their priorities, their experiences and even their finances.”
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