Bombshell report on Trump taxes sends GOP nominee reeling

This is coming from a guy who supports a candidate that tweets about watching a Venezuelan former Miss Universes' Spanish tv show 'sex tape' at 3AM. Such nuanced policy discussion. I wonder if that 'sex tape' will explain how slashing taxes for the top 1% is going to trickle down to us plebs.

 

So laughably stupid...and yet your average everyday RL post.

So, you're a journalist and someone mails you the tax returns for a major party presidential candidate...one that has refused to release his returns...and they're not supposed to report on them? As long as they did their research and vetting, what did the reporters do wrong?

 

I like the idea that its a "smear" and that the it shows not being able to win on ideas. That's rich coming from Newt, Trump supporters, and republicans...

 

3k carry-over limit apply to capital gain. Real estate business has all kind of ways to offset tax years after years. Some could land you in jail and most trying to game the system would trigger audits. If you have the money, you can push the boundary and have lawyers fight for you.

 

and if he's employing lawyers to fight IRS audits then he's not a genius but just a plain crook and tax cheat

 

the NYT article interview with his CPA implies that he's not that interested in the nut and bolt of taxes. So yea, he can claim he knows everything about taxes, but it's likely his CPA and lawyers that are doing all the work and he doesn't know much.

 

Trump is a buffoon and he should not be president, but calling someone unpatriotic because they minimize their taxes is really stupid.

 

You declare business losses on your personal taxes and carry them over indefinitely. It's only investments that has the 3000k limit.

 

Yes, he's a scumbag, hypocrite, and not fit to be president. It just seems to me businessmen taking advantage of the tax laws to benefit their pockets shouldn't be that surprising or even that particularly damning to Trump in this election. We already knew this. There are much better reasons Trump should not be president and this is distracting from it.

 

It is funny how so many people want to vote for Trump to "fix" the government, they probably think it will be great if Trump "fixed" the system so he can actually get the government to pay him money instead of just paying zero taxes.

 

LMFAO They "hate" Hillary? Just like they "hated" Obama and Bill?

Race is a complicated factor, which is difficult measure.... although I agree with you that not all Trump supporters are prejudice, but his complete lack of class or decorum clearly doesn't bother them. Which is funny.... because these same people complained about Bill Clinton and Obama not being classy enough.

What it all comes down to is some people feel they can relate more to the populism of Palin and Trump.

 

Well...just so we all can at least agree on a frame of reference in all this...since everyone already "knows" this...


Why We Ask to See Candidates’ Tax Returns
By MITCHELL ZUCKOFFAUG. 5, 2016


Boston — Lost in the debate over Donald J. Trump’s refusal to release his tax returns is the story of where the custom of disclosure comes from — and why it can be so valuable as a measure of character. It’s a tale of presidential tax shenanigans, political scandal and one of the most famous quotations in American history: Richard M. Nixon’s “I am not a crook.”

The story begins in July 1969, when Congress eliminated a provision of the tax code that had allowed a sitting or former president to donate his papers to a public or nonprofit archive in exchange for a very large tax deduction. Congress’s rationale was that a president’s papers already belonged to the public.

In his taxes for 1969, President Nixon indicated that four months before Congress acted, he had donated more than 1,000 boxes of documents to the National Archives. He claimed a deduction of more than $500,000.

The write-off didn’t become public until 1973, when it was mentioned in passing during a lawsuit related to the Watergate break-in. Although the deed formally giving the papers to the National Archives was dated March 27, 1969, it turned out not to have been signed until April 1970, nine months after presidential document donations lost nearly all their tax benefits. (A thorough account of Nixon’s tax dodge is contained in a paper written for the United States Capitol Historical Society by the Northwestern University law professor Joseph J. Thorndike.)

Had Nixon really beaten the deadline? And had he overstated the papers’ value to generate a personal windfall?

Reporters swarmed and advocates for fair taxation demanded an audit. But Nixon refused to release his taxes and opposed an audit. The I.R.S. bowed to his wishes.

There the story stalled until Oct. 3, 1973, when Jack White, a 31-year-old suburban reporter for The Providence Journal-Bulletin, broke the biggest story of his career. While big-time reporters prowled Washington for details about President Nixon’s taxes, White covered small-town politics and high-society events as manager of his paper’s bureau in Newport, R.I. But White, rumpled and easygoing, had a knack for earning the trust of sources. One source provided him with evidence that Nixon had paid taxes of only $792.81 in 1970 and $878.03 in 1971, despite having income exceeding $400,000.

By donating his papers with a backdated deed, Nixon had slashed his tax bill drastically. He paid the equivalent of a family of three earning about $8,000 in 1970 dollars.

After White’s article was published, demands rose for full disclosure. The next month, White’s colleague at the Providence paper, Joseph Ungaro, asked Nixon about his taxes during his appearance at a newspaper editors’ conference in Florida. Nixon replied: “I welcome this kind of examination, because people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I am not a crook.”

No single comment would stick more firmly to Nixon. It had never before been necessary for a president to distinguish himself from ordinary tax cheats. Yet still he wouldn’t release his taxes.

In the meantime, the I.R.S. reversed itself and decided to audit Nixon’s returns for the previous few years. While the audit was underway, Nixon buckled to public pressure in December 1973 and released five years of tax documents. He also asked a congressional committee to review, among other things, his gift of the papers.

The aftermath was sweeter for White than for Nixon. In May 1974, White won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting. He died in 2005 without revealing his source. (As the story unfolded, I.R.S investigators said they had solved the mystery of the leak by tracing the president’s tax records to a photocopy machine in the agency’s national computer center in Martinsburg, W.Va. One unidentified I.R.S. employee quit to avoid being fired.)

Three months after White won his Pulitzer, Nixon resigned from office, not because of taxes but under threat of impeachment for the Watergate cover-up. Among other misdeeds, he was accused of misusing the F.B.I., the C.I.A. and the I.R.S. In addition to losing his presidency, Nixon lost nearly half his net worth paying what he owed to the I.R.S.

Until Donald Trump, every major-party presidential nominee since then had released his or her tax returns (except Gerald Ford, who released a summary in 1976). The simple reason is that, on at least one subject, Nixon got it right: The American people need to know if their president is a crook.

Mitchell Zuckoff is a journalism professor at Boston University.

 

... because he wasn't a crook. That's great history to know and is still very relevant today.

 

It is the same partisan crap every cycle but this one is different in that both candidates are truly hated(by a large percentage of their own side) and arguably truly incompetent. In the past it has been more disliked by the opposing party and attacked on policy differences that make them "incompetent". I honestly believe that neither Hillary nor Trump are competent to serve as POTUS.

I disagree with your thoughts on prejudice, all Trump supporters are prejudiced as are all Hillary supporters and everyone else on the planet. I believe that we have allowed the media to color our opinions of "the other side" to the point of insanity. I talk to people of all races and creeds and I haven't really found any that are WAY out there to the point where we can't discuss things on some level and mostly agree. Democrats are not illegal, lazy, violent brown people and Republicans are not old, rich white devils but the media sure makes a good case for it.

It used to be right and left, now it is racists this and bigot that. If you can't allow someone to discuss any topic without shouting them down, you are the bigot.

 

This isn't true according to polling data. Overall, yes, both have a net negative favorable rating. Clinton is around -10 to -15 while Trump is around -20 to -25. But they both have a net positive rating among both their party and folks that lend toward their party.

Trump +56 among REP, +9 among conservative (and -45 among moderate)
Clinton +65 among DEM, +63 among liberal (and -6 among moderate)

 

I don't mind his tax avoidance. I don't mind him losing nearly a billion dollars. I'm just glad that this release will force Trump to release the rest of his tax returns in order to control the damage of this story. He'll probably have to release a lot more now than he would have had he released of his own accord. Happy to see lack of transparency punished.

 

Don't hold your breath, JV. The odds are better that he has worse things in his income tax returns, and even if he doesn't, the man is such a bizarre egomaniac that I highly doubt that he'll release his returns simply because he would be "forced" to do it.

 

That's true -- there might be more damaging things in his returns that will compel him to stay mum. But I think this tax thing will kill his chances -- if he had any -- if he doesn't do something significant to mitigate the damage. Either way is good: be transparent, or don't be president. We forced Clinton to be transparent on the emails (mostly). Now, she's reaping the benefit of transparency.