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The top-ranked Democrat in Washington has called President Donald Trump’s alleged tax avoidance a matter of “national security.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi asked if Trump owed money to foreign interests, following an article about his financial records from the New York Times.
It alleges that Trump paid just $ 750 (£ 580) in federal income taxes in both 2016 and 2017.
Trump called the report “fake news.”
Speaking on NBC, Pelosi said the report showed that “this president appears to be over $ 400 million in debt.”
“Who? Different countries? What influence do they have?” he asked, adding, “So, for me, this is a national security issue.”
“The fact that he could have a sitting president who owes hundreds of millions of dollars and that he personally guarantees the lenders, and we don’t know who these lenders are,” he said, suggesting that Trump might be in debt to the Russian president. . Vladimir Putin.
“What does Putin have on the president politically? Personally? Financially?”
According to the explosive New York Times report, which says it obtained tax records from Trump and his companies for two decades, Trump paid no income tax in 10 of the previous 15 years. He adds that the president is personally responsible for more than $ 300 million in loans, which will mature in the next four years.
It does not suggest that Trump received previously unknown income from Russia, although he did say that the president had earned some money from foreign sources.
The records reveal “chronic losses and years of tax avoidance,” he says.
In a tweet on Monday, the president accused the media of raising taxes and “other nonsense with information obtained illegally and only with bad intentions.”
He said he had “paid many millions of dollars in taxes” but had also received tax credits. In response to the loss allegations, Trump added that he had “very little debt” compared to the value of his assets.
Trump has faced legal challenges for refusing to share documents related to his fortune and business. He is the first president since the 1970s not to make his tax returns public, although the law does not require it.
The New York Times said that the information analyzed in its report was “provided by sources with legal access.”
The report came just days before Trump’s first presidential debate with his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, and weeks before the Nov.3 election.
What are the key claims?
The New York Times said it reviewed tax returns related to President Trump and businesses owned by the Trump Organization dating back to the 1990s, as well as his personal returns from 2016 and 2017.
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He said the president paid just $ 750 in income taxes in both 2016 and 2017, while he paid no income taxes in 10 of the previous 15 years, “largely because he reported losing much more money than won”.
The newspaper also claims that “most” of Trump’s top businesses, such as his golf courses and hotels, “report losing millions, if not tens of millions, of dollars year after year.”
The report also alleges that some of President Trump’s companies have received money from “lobbyists, foreign officials and others seeking time, access or favors” from the president. It is alleged that he earned $ 73 million in overseas income in his first two years in the White House.
Much of that came from its golf courses in Ireland and Scotland, but the Trump Organization also received money “from licensing deals in countries with prickly geopolitical or authoritarian-leaning leaders,” according to the New York Times.
The licensing deals reportedly earned Trump $ 3 million from the Philippines, $ 2.3 million from India and $ 1 million from Turkey.
The report says there is evidence that Trump reduced his taxable income in 2017 by paying $ 747,622 in consulting fees to Ivanka Trump, his daughter and senior adviser.
He is also reported to have written off more than $ 70,000 in styling costs as business expenses during his time on his television show, The Apprentice.
Before he became president, Trump was known as a celebrated businessman and real estate mogul, who built an image of a hugely successful self-made billionaire that could be affected by the latest revelations, observers say.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average American household paid $ 9,302 in federal income taxes in 2018, with a median income figure of $ 78,635.
In an annual financial disclosure that you must make as president, President Trump said he made at least $ 434.9 million in 2018. The newspaper disputes this, claiming that his tax returns show that the president had come out in the red, with $ 47.4 million. losses.
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The Trump Organization has rejected the New York Times accusations, saying “most” of the facts are inaccurate.
What has been the reaction?
Trump and the Trump Organization denied the allegations in the report, but critics of the president condemned his tax deals.
Pelosi described the alleged tax avoidance as an insult to working families in the United States, as well as raising the issue of national security.
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has not commented so far, but his campaign team highlighted on Twitter that teachers, firefighters and nurses paid well over $ 750 in taxes.
Unwanted distraction for Trump or more?
So this is what Donald Trump has kept out of the public eye for all these years?
The president’s tax returns, according to the New York Times, provide no evidence of a dire connection to Russian mobsters or other shady figures, as some have speculated. Instead, they show that the real estate mogul and reality TV’s financial empire is built on sand: bleeding money, hundreds of millions of dollars in debt, and willing to pay next to nothing in federal taxes.
These arrangements will be closely scrutinized in the coming weeks, and moves of questionable legality will make their own headlines.
Trump has boasted in the past of his ability to take advantage of every loophole in what he says is a corrupt tax system. When you don’t deny this report, you can offer a similar defense, and your followers will likely find it sufficient. Americans who are outraged that they have paid more taxes than the billionaire president of the United States are probably already against him.
The Times story, however, is another unwanted distraction for the president. Every day that passes in him is one that the Trump campaign cannot focus on changing the dynamics in a race that seems tilted against him.
