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| Ed Wexler |
The
New York Times,
27 September 2020:
The
Times obtained Donald Trump’s tax information extending over more
than two decades, revealing struggling properties, vast write-offs,
an audit battle and hundreds of millions in debt coming due.
Donald
J. Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes the year he won the
presidency. In his first year in the White House, he paid another
$750.
He
had paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years —
largely because he reported losing much more money than he made.
As
the president wages a re-election campaign that polls say he is in
danger of losing, his finances are under stress, beset by losses and
hundreds of millions of dollars in debt coming due that he has
personally guaranteed. Also hanging over him is a decade-long audit
battle with the Internal Revenue Service over the legitimacy of a
$72.9 million tax refund that he claimed, and received, after
declaring huge losses. An adverse ruling could cost him more than
$100 million.
The
tax returns that Mr. Trump has long fought to keep private tell a
story fundamentally different from the one he has sold to the
American public. His reports to the I.R.S. portray a businessman who
takes in hundreds of millions of dollars a year yet racks up chronic
losses that he aggressively employs to avoid paying taxes. Now, with
his financial challenges mounting, the records show that he depends
more and more on making money from businesses that put him in
potential and often direct conflict of interest with his job as
president.
The
New York Times has obtained tax-return data extending over more than
two decades for Mr. Trump and the hundreds of companies that make up
his business organization, including detailed information from his
first two years in office. It does not include his personal returns
for 2018 or 2019. This article offers an overview of The Times’s
findings; additional articles will be published in the coming
weeks…...
Read
the full article here.
