How Trump used loopholes to pay $0 in income tax
The last time Donald Trump's tax returns were made public, it was revealed he had paid zero dollars in income taxes to the federal government, The Washington Post reports. The information was included on a 1981 report by New Jersey gambling regulators, which showed that for at least two years in the 1970s, Trump had used a tax-code loophole to report negative income:
State records show that Trump claimed that his combined income in 1978 and 1979 was negative $3.8 million, allowing him to pay no taxes. A few years earlier, he had told The New York Times he was worth more than $200 million.Tax analysts say it is possible that Trump pays very low income taxes, or no taxes at all, using tactics available to wealthy investors and developers, such as depreciating the value of real estate. [The Washington Post]
"At some point, he could be the tax collector-in-chief. He'd supervise the IRS, making sure all of us live up to our own tax responsibilities," tax policy expert Joe Thorndike told The Washington Post. "People deserve to know ... how a person like that plays the game."
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Mitt Romney has previously blasted Trump over his hesitation to release financial information, claiming that Trump's returns could very well be hiding "a bombshell of unusual size."
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