The item was carried by Strib, online here.
For someone who has escaped substantial tax payments while touting personal wealth and business acumen, losses and expenses are apparently under audit, and that is where people expert in the tax code and tax law will judge legitimacy concerns of filings.
Learned Hand wrote that nobody has to pay more than owed, and tax avoidance alone is not unlawful, and that under tax law everyone is free to arrange affairs to pay less, legitimately; however, tax evasion, is a breach of law.
Let Trump stall releasing tax returns while possibly questioning the truth of NYT data, and VOTE HIM OUT FOR OTHER REASONS THAN HIS TAKING ADVANTAGE OF TAX LAW JIGGERED TO FAVOR THE WEALTHY IN THAT THEY HAVE MULTIPLE OPTIONS IN ARRANGING AFFAIRS, WHILE WAGE EARNERS DIFFER.
Congress passes the tax laws, and courts make judgments about disputed questions of what the laws mean, in terms of tax minimization effort of some citizen.
The Code is thick. The Regulations thicker. And then there are the published cases. Let the audit proceed. Let voters decide on each candidate's merit. By whatever criteria each voter holds most crucial.
In that sense, this year is not any different. Getting a majority of electoral college votes determines a winner. Last election, Trump won. Grover Cleveland won one too. Trump is coarse, but he won. Biden-Harris vs. Trump-Pence should not be decided because the NYT wrote about Trump tax detail, where Trump could release returns if wanting to prove the NYT reported facts stand in error.
In the tax things, blame the system more than you blame Trump -- for conforming his reporting of affairs to extremes the system invented. NYT reported Trump in some years paid an alternate minimum tax and paid tax on The Apprentice show contract earnings.
IF YOU BLAME THE SYSTEM, THEN WORK TO CHANGE THE SYSTEM. "WORK" IN THE BROADEST SENSE OF THE TERM - DEDICATE TIME TO IT.
AND REALIZE THERE ARE MANY WAYS TO WORK.
LAST: Read the NYT report at NYT, or at the Strib link. See what you think.
____________UPDATE__________
DWT, on Trump tax avoidance taken to an extreme:
by Noah
Well, well, well! It's the $750 Man! President Deadbeat paid a whole $750 in taxes in his first year as president. He gamed the IRS and, by extension, all of us. I'm shocked I tell ya! Shocked and, definitely appalled and pissed, really pissed. Here's what our 6 most recent presidents paid in their first year in office. Compare and Contrast:1. President Ronald Reagan- $165,202Yep, everyone I know paid more taxes than Trump did. Oh, and what we've seen so far shows that Trump is no billionaire but we already knew that. He just plays one for the suckers and fools. He's a hoax, a hoax, a hoax, a hoax! From any angle Donald Trump and [...] a detailed record of where all that COVID relief money went would be nice. That's where it gets tricky though. There's just too many people involved in that one so I'll settle just for how much went to his syndicate of associates and we'll see where that leads. We need a wiki-leaks for Swiss bank accounts.
2. President H. W. Bush- $101.382
3. President Bill Clinton- $62,670
4. President George W. Bush- $250,221
5. President Barrack Obama- $1,792,414
6. Herr Trump, aka Dear Leader- $750
Indeed, that was a lot of money, a lot of outstretched hands, some from people who know other people and got treated well, others with more merit got hung out to dry.
Hat tip to another DWT post about Trump tax avoidance, for linking to a Bloomberg published item, here. titled: "Trump's Taxes Show He's a National Security Threat - What trade-offs would a president with this level of indebtedness be willing to make to save face?" By Timothy L. O'Brien - September 28, 2020.
That Bloomberg titling basically tells the story, report text fleshing things out this way:
The Times, in a news story published Sunday evening that disclosed years of the president’s tax returns, also put a lot of clothing on things we didn’t know. Trump paid just $750 in federal income taxes in 2016, the year he was elected president, and the same amount the following year, when he entered the White House. In many years recently he hasn’t paid anything at all. He has played so fast and loose with the taxman that he’s entangled in an audit. He paid his daughter Ivanka lush consulting fees that he deducted as a business expense even though she helped him manage the Trump Organization. And he’s taken questionable tax write-offs on everything from getting his hair coifed to managing his personal residences.
Step away from the tragicomic tawdriness and grift that the tax returns define, however, and focus on what they reveal about Trump as the most powerful man in the world and occupant of the Oval Office.
Due to his indebtedness, his reliance on income from overseas and his refusal to authentically distance himself from his hodgepodge of business, Trump represents a profound national security threat – a threat that will only escalate if he’s re-elected. The tax returns also show the extent to which Trump has repeatedly betrayed the interests of many of the average Americans who elected him and remain his most loyal supporters.
[...] According to the Times, Trump has about $421 million in debts which he has personally guaranteed and which are coming due over the next several years.[...]
Trump has been bloviating about being worth $10 billion ever since he entered the 2016 presidential race, a figure that simply isn’t true. He’s worth a fraction of that amount, and the larger his indebtedness becomes, the more strain it puts on his assets. The Covid-19 pandemic has taken a particularly brutal toll on the sectors in which the Trump Organization operates — real estate, travel and leisure. [...] So if he’s tempted to save himself by getting a handout, that makes him a mark.
[...] If Vladimir Putin, for example, can backchannel a loan or a handout to the president, how hard is Trump going to be on Russia? Not that we should worry about Trump’s relationship with Putin. That’s just a hypothetical question.
Trump’s own history of avoiding tax payments – and often paying nothing -- is the other issue that should alarm the president’s supporters. Trump and the Republican Party engineered a massive tax cut in 2017 that largely benefitted the most affluent Americans and the largest corporations in the U.S. Now we learn that the president who pushed a tax cut that didn’t deliver the economic stimulus he claimed it would, but feathered the nests of the most privileged, has rarely paid taxes in recent years.
Trump paid $750 in taxes the year he was elected! That’s way less than the $130,000 in hush money he paid Stormy Daniels. [...]
That last sentence, over 130 times more to the porn actress for a roll in the hay, than he paid our nation in the year he won the presidency. He has priorities, That "how many times more" analysis of things also touches his death rate per pandemic ineptitude and deceit vs all U.S. warfare death tolls since WW II.
TRUMP - the President who pays less and kills more.
Reelect him? Fools may want to. I do not. Do you?
Yes, even with the extreme insult of Biden thrown at us by inner party Dem power people along with long-time Republican multi-billionaire Mike Bloomberg, mocking US.
Joe Biden. And Kamala Harris.
We do have best and brightest - and it ain't them.
___________FURTHER UPDATE__________
AP coverage of the cantankerous debate spectacle/circus, ending paragraphs as carried by Strib:
“Violence in response is never appropriate, “Biden said. “Never appropriate. Peaceful protest is.”
The attacks turned deeply personal when Trump returned to a campaign attack line by declaring that Biden's son, Hunter, had inappropriately benefitted from his father's connections while working in Ukraine. Biden rarely looked at Trump during the night but turned to face the president when he defended his sons, including Beau, an Army veteran who died of cancer in 2015, after the commander in chief's reported insults of those who served in the military.
A new report from two Republican-led Senate committees alleged that Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine at the same time his father was vice president raised conflict-of-interest concerns for the Obama administration, but the report did not link Joe Biden to any wrongdoing or misconduct. Trump was impeached for pushing Kiev to investigate the Biden family.
The debate was arguably Trump's best chance to try to reframe the campaign as a choice between candidates and not a referendum over his handling of the virus that has killed more people in America than any other nation. Americans, according to polling, have soured on his leadership in the crisis, and the president has struggled to land consistent attacks on Biden.
In the hours before the debate, Biden released his 2019 tax returns just days after the blockbuster revelations about Trump’s long-hidden tax history, including that he paid only $750 a year in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017 and nothing in many other years. The Bidens paid nearly $300,000 in taxes in 2019.
Trump, in the debate, insisted he paid millions in taxes — but refused to say how much he paid in federal income taxes — and insisted he had taken advantage of legal tax incentives, another angry exchange that led to Biden declaring that Trump was the “worst president” the nation has ever had.
Do you believe Trump "paid millions in taxes" yet is hiding his tax returns which would prove or disprove his bald assertion? Are you a fool? Are you an entrenched Republican? (Same question posed three ways.)