The Tax Hoax!

[fredtoast]

(09-28-2020, 05:24 PM)PhilHos Wrote: I admit. I have paid little to no attention to the Trump tax return news. Can someone tell me as unbaisedly as possible (which means probably only Matt is capable) about why this is bad? Did Trump do something illegal?

We don't know if he did anything illegal but we know his tax returns are under investigation (active audit).  But even if it is not illegal it is bad for other reasons.

1.  He claimed he would run the United States like his business empire, but his tax records show that he is a terrible businessman.  He has artificially pumped up the US economy using deficit spending just like he pumped up this appearance of wealth by borrowing money.

2.  He repeatedly lied about how much he was worth and how much money he was making.

3.  He has claimed that even the poorest people in American should pay some income taxes in order to be "part of the game" at the same time he was paying zero income taxes.

4.  He campaigned on the motto "America First" while he paid thousands of times more income tax to foreign countries than to the United States.

5.  His massive amounts of debt make him a security risk.

6.  Trump owned businesses have billed the United Sates government close to $1 million dollars while he has been in office.  Every time he goes home to play golf his resort bills the United States government for the lodging of his staff and Secret Service agents.  His hotel in Washington DC bills for rooms for foreign diplomats and other visitors.

7.  He has taken hundreds of thousand of dollars of deductions for consulting fees he paid to his own children. 

[Belsnickel]

(09-28-2020, 05:24 PM)PhilHos Wrote: I admit. I have paid little to no attention to the Trump tax return news. Can someone tell me as unbaisedly as possible (which means probably only Matt is capable) about why this is bad? Did Trump do something illegal?

So, there have been some answers, already, but specifically from my position, this is mostly an optics thing. There is potential liability for Trump with violations of the tax code, but because of the nature of his business dealings they aren't inherently illegal like they would be for you or I. Real estate folks have a lot more leeway with things to be written off. Things like the $70k in hair styling could be legitimate expenses if done for The Apprentice.

The biggest issue with this will be the optics of it, which still won't be that big of a deal. The actual conservatives that are for some reason behind Trump will consider this a good thing for him to have done. The people that hitched their horses to his wagon more because of the cult of personality won't actually see this news break through to them and if they do it will be shrugged off.

Now, there are real concerns with the debt, as Dill has pointed out. He owes a lot of money to folks in different countries, which is a liability. If he were anyone else, he would not have been eligible for a security clearance for that reason alone. But since he is POTUS, that doesn't much matter for him.

[Forever Spinning Vinyl]

One part that isn't illegal is the reason he didn't pay taxes . . . he lost millions of dollars every year. His "I'm a successful businessman" schpiel just got shot to shit.

[Goalpost]

Trump has said he is worth 10 billion. I've read that his assets are really around 1.5 billion. So take his assets at that low side. Is 300 million in liabilities an issue? The liability number is huge but the question I guess is relativeness.

[Benton]

(09-29-2020, 04:16 PM)Forever Spinning Vinyl Wrote: One part that isn't illegal is the reason he didn't pay taxes . . . he lost millions of dollars every year. His "I'm a successful businessman" schpiel just got shot to shit.

Well, there's losing money at business and there's losing money at business.

A lot of the loopholes in the tax code are there to help you lose money and live an affluent lifestyle. Like paying your daughter $700,000 in consulting fees. You can gift someone up to (I believe this is the right dollar amount) $20,000. But "pay" them $700,000 in consulting fees? Well, that's just being a smart businessman. Like to travel but hate paying somebody else? Buy a jet! You can write off pilot salaries, maintenance costs, storage, insurance, aircraft depreciation and finance charges. You're losing money like a billionaire now!


And that's where some of this is so ridiculous. 


But there is also the aspect you mention, which is why I think Trump never wanted his returns released. It's hard to sell yourself as one of the world's best business minds when you're really just the King of Welfare.

[GMDino]

(09-29-2020, 06:20 PM)Benton Wrote: Well, there's losing money at business and there's losing money at business.

A lot of the loopholes in the tax code are there to help you lose money and live an affluent lifestyle. Like paying your daughter $700,000 in consulting fees. You can gift someone up to (I believe this is the right dollar amount) $20,000. But "pay" them $700,000 in consulting fees? Well, that's just being a smart businessman. Like to travel but hate paying somebody else? Buy a jet! You can write off pilot salaries, maintenance costs, storage, insurance, aircraft depreciation and finance charges. You're losing money like a billionaire now!


And that's where some of this is so ridiculous. 


But there is also the aspect you mention, which is why I think Trump never wanted his returns released. It's hard to sell yourself as one of the world's best business minds when you're really just the King of Welfare.

Some of what I have read questions the legality of paying a consulting fee to someone who is already on the payroll.

[oncemoreuntothejimbreech]

(09-29-2020, 07:11 PM)GMDino Wrote: Some of what I have read questions the legality of paying a consulting fee to someone who is already on the payroll.

Overstating losses to avoid paying taxes is also fraud.

[GMDino]

(09-29-2020, 07:13 PM)oncemoreuntothejimbreech Wrote: Overstating losses to avoid paying taxes is also fraud.

Really Trump is just about lying.  Lie about losses, lie about profits, lie about the worth of his properties depending if he's fighting his taxes or trying to get a loan.

Like I said, the IRS is probably interested in seeing how much money he "really" made if he claimed he lost millions for years and did not.

[Luvnit2]

(09-28-2020, 02:10 PM)Dill Wrote: Dems will spin this as chronic corruption and mismanagement.

LONG-CONCEALED RECORDS SHOW TRUMP’S CHRONIC LOSSES AND YEARS OF TAX AVOIDANCE
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/09/27/us/donald-trump-taxes.html

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 Apprentice,” along with the licensing and endorsement deals that flowed from his expanding celebrity, brought Mr. Trump a total of $427.4 million, The Times’s analysis of the records found. He invested much of that in a collection of businesses, mostly golf courses, that in the years since have steadily devoured cash — much as the money he secretly received from his father financed a spree of quixotic overspending that led to his collapse in the early 1990s....

Tax records do not have the specificity to evaluate the legitimacy of every business expense Mr. Trump claims to reduce his taxable income — for instance, without any explanation in his returns, the general and administrative expenses at his Bedminster golf club in New Jersey increased fivefold from 2016 to 2017. And he has previously bragged that his ability to get by without paying taxes “makes me smart,” as he said in 2016. But the returns, by his own account, undercut his claims of financial acumen, showing that he is simply pouring more money into many businesses than he is taking out.

The picture that perhaps emerges most starkly from the mountain of figures and tax schedules prepared by Mr. Trump’s accountants is of a businessman-president in a tightening financial vise.

Most of Mr. Trump’s core enterprises — from his constellation of golf courses to his conservative-magnet hotel in Washington — report losing millions, if not tens of millions, of dollars year after year.

His revenue from “The Apprentice” and from licensing deals is drying up, and several years ago he sold nearly all the stocks that now might have helped him plug holes in his struggling properties.

300 million in personal loans will come due in the next few years. T apparently gave Ivanka almost 800,000 as a gift and wrote it of as payment for "consulting"--when she was an employee of the Trump organization. Tax investigators have to be geniuses to sort all this out.

Trump did not write tax codes, that would be Congress. IRS audits Trump and hos businesses every year and no issues. Simply, every thing he did he did by the law or the IRS would be all over him and his businesses.

I own a business that does 6 million a year in revenue, some years I pay a lot of federal tax, other years I use the tax code to get refunds. I did not write the tax law, I just hired a great accountant that knows how to apply my tax liability by the law. Oh, and I also have around 250 people I am employ and pay a nice wage and great health insurance to each year to those who want to say it is not fair.

[Luvnit2]

(09-29-2020, 11:26 AM)fredtoast Wrote: We don't know if he did anything illegal but we know his tax returns are under investigation (active audit).  But even if it is not illegal it is bad for other reasons.

1.  He claimed he would run the United States like his business empire, but his tax records show that he is a terrible businessman.  He has artificially pumped up the US economy using deficit spending just like he pumped up this appearance of wealth by borrowing money.

2.  He repeatedly lied about how much he was worth and how much money he was making.

3.  He has claimed that even the poorest people in American should pay some income taxes in order to be "part of the game" at the same time he was paying zero income taxes.

4.  He campaigned on the motto "America First" while he paid thousands of times more income tax to foreign countries than to the United States.

5.  His massive amounts of debt make him a security risk.

6.  Trump owned businesses have billed the United Sates government close to $1 million dollars while he has been in office.  Every time he goes home to play golf his resort bills the United States government for the lodging of his staff and Secret Service agents.  His hotel in Washington DC bills for rooms for foreign diplomats and other visitors.

7.  He has taken hundreds of thousand of dollars of deductions for consulting fees he paid to his own children. 

All 100% legal Fred. Look around, all politicians pay money to family members and some like Biden used their position for their kid to get 3.5 million dollars from a Russian mayor and friend of Putin. 

[oncemoreuntothejimbreech]

(09-29-2020, 07:55 PM)Luvnit2 Wrote: Trump did not write tax codes, that would be Congress. IRS audits Trump and hos businesses every year and no issues. Simply, every thing he did he did by the law or the IRS would be all over him and his businesses.

I own a business that does 6 million a year in revenue, some years I pay a lot of federal tax, other years I use the tax code to get refunds. I did not write the tax law, I just hired a great accountant that knows how to apply my tax liability by the law. Oh, and I also have around 250 people I am employ and pay a nice wage and great health insurance to each year to those who want to say it is not fair.

Aren’t they all over him?

[Benton]

(09-29-2020, 07:55 PM)Luvnit2 Wrote: Trump did not write tax codes, that would be Congress. IRS audits Trump and hos businesses every year and no issues. Simply, every thing he did he did by the law or the IRS would be all over him and his businesses.

I own a business that does 6 million a year in revenue, some years I pay a lot of federal tax, other years I use the tax code to get refunds. I did not write the tax law, I just hired a great accountant that knows how to apply my tax liability by the law. Oh, and I also have around 250 people I am employ and pay a nice wage and great health insurance to each year to those who want to say it is not fair.

https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-inc-podcast-never-before-seen-trump-tax-documents-show-major-inconsistencies

It depends. He reported twice as much in income to investors than he reported to the irs. That's not working the system, that's most likely fraud. 

I say most likely because I don't know the particulars. Personally, I'm horrible at taxes but, like you, I have a good accountant. 

Either way though it shows a glaring problem with the tax system. When, according to the tax system, one of the worst business people in the country can become a billionaire but pay little to no taxes, the system isn't working.

[GMDino]

(09-29-2020, 07:55 PM)Luvnit2 Wrote: Trump did not write tax codes, that would be Congress. IRS audits Trump and hos businesses every year and no issues. Simply, every thing he did he did by the law or the IRS would be all over him and his businesses.

I own a business that does 6 million a year in revenue, some years I pay a lot of federal tax, other years I use the tax code to get refunds. I did not write the tax law, I just hired a great accountant that knows how to apply my tax liability by the law. Oh, and I also have around 250 people I am employ and pay a nice wage and great health insurance to each year to those who want to say it is not fair.

Actually there is a $72 million issue that might result in a $100 million loss to Trump if he has to pay it back with interest.

Why don't you use the tax codes every year to get a refund?  Is Trump just smarter than you?

[Dill]

(09-29-2020, 07:55 PM)Luvnit2 Wrote: Trump did not write tax codes, that would be Congress. IRS audits Trump and hos businesses every year and no issues. Simply, every thing he did he did by the law or the IRS would be all over him and his businesses.

I own a business that does 6 million a year in revenue, some years I pay a lot of federal tax, other years I use the tax code to get refunds. I did not write the tax law, I just hired a great accountant that knows how to apply my tax liability by the law. Oh, and I also have around 250 people I am employ and pay a nice wage and great health insurance to each year to those who want to say it is not fair.

Indeed they are all over him. Have been for years. 

That one does not write the tax codes should not give one license to avoid the civic responsibility shouldered by the middle and lower classes.

And Trump has already lost two tax cases, one in which he forged tax documents.

Luvnit, the NYT article was about Trump, not you. No one is saying you've not been fair. 

I'm guessing your personal business history is not one of myriad lawsuits, bankruptcies and fraud? 

You would not have to approach Deutsche Bank for loans; you could get them in-country? 

[Dill]

(09-29-2020, 07:58 PM)Luvnit2 Wrote: All 100% legal Fred. Look around, all politicians pay money to family members and some like Biden used their position for their kid to get 3.5 million dollars from a Russian mayor and friend of Putin. 

Can you provide some sources for that? I have never heard about this. Just wondering.

[oncemoreuntothejimbreech]

(09-29-2020, 07:58 PM)Luvnit2 Wrote: All 100% legal Fred. Look around, all politicians pay money to family members and some like Biden used their position for their kid to get 3.5 million dollars from a Russian mayor and friend of Putin. 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.politico.com/amp/news/2020/09/23/gop-senators-anti-biden-report-420362

Trump is a friend of Putin.

[*TheLeonardLeap*]

(09-29-2020, 11:26 AM)fredtoast Wrote: 1.  He claimed he would run the United States like his business empire, but his tax records show that he is a terrible businessman.  He has artificially pumped up the US economy using deficit spending just like he pumped up this appearance of wealth by borrowing money.

So in other words, campaign promise fulfilled?  

[fredtoast]

(09-29-2020, 07:58 PM)Luvnit2 Wrote: All 100% legal Fred.

Actually we don't know yet. It depends on if his daughter actually provided legit services. This is one of the oldest tricks in the book to avoid gift/inheritence tax.

[jj22]

(09-29-2020, 08:22 PM)Dill Wrote: Indeed they are all over him. Have been for years. 

True. A 20 year audit likely leads to prison. All politics aside. If Trump is telling the truth (big if), then being under audit that long is damning and likely going to end in an arrest. There's no way around it.

[oncemoreuntothejimbreech]

(09-29-2020, 07:58 PM)Luvnit2 Wrote: All 100% legal Fred. Look around, all politicians pay money to family members and some like Biden used their position for their kid to get 3.5 million dollars from a Russian mayor and friend of Putin. 

I, for one, would love to see Trump attack Biden on 1) nepotism and 2) his relationship with Putin.  Would LOVE IT.

Trump used his position to get Jared Kushner a position in the White House and a security clearance.  He used his position to blockade an ally and compromise national security to strong arm Jared a $1.1 billion (with a B) 99 year lease paid up front.

https://www.justsecurity.org/69094/timeline-on-jared-kushner-qatar-666-fifth-avenue-and-white-house-policy/

Let's say Biden did get his idiot son a job he wasn't qualified for in Ukraine.  Trump got his idiot son in law a job in the White House and put him in charge of the Middle East peace problem, the opioid crisis, diplomacy with Mexico and China, reforming health care for veterans, reforming the criminal justice system, reforming the federal government to operate like a business, building the Wall, solving all the Covid 19 logistical problems.  As a real estate agent and poster boy for college admission scams is qualified for none of them.