President Trump and Democratic candidate Joe Biden went toe-to-toe at the final presidential debate on Thursday over their respective tax returns. "I have not taken a penny from any foreign source ever in my life," Biden stressed. "We learned that this president paid 50 times the tax in China," he added, evidently citing a report in The New York Times this week that Trump International Hotels Management L.L.C. paid nearly $200,000 in taxes in China between 2013 and 2015.
Biden went on to say, "I have released all of my tax returns. Twenty-two years. Go look at them. Twenty-two years of my tax returns. You have not released a single, solitary year of your tax returns. What are you hiding? Why are you unwilling? … Release your tax returns, or stop talking about corruption."
In his response, Trump repeated the falsehood that he cannot release his tax returns because he is under audit. But "much more importantly than that," Trump went on, "people were saying $750. I asked [my accountants] a week ago, 'What did I pay?' They said, 'Sir, you prepaid tens of millions of dollars.' I prepaid my tax."
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The Wall Street Journal's Richard Rubin offered some clarification of the comment: "Though it's not clear exactly what [Trump] meant, it's common for people to make estimated income tax payments in advance and then use those balances to settle their tax liability, just like salaried people have income taxes withheld from their paychecks and settle up on their tax returns," he wrote.
The New York Times' Peter Baker added, however, that "when [Trump] says he paid millions of taxes, that does not mean he paid federal income taxes. According to the tax records our colleagues obtained, he paid just $750 in 2016 in federal income taxes and $750 in 2017 and zero in 11 of 18 years examined." Watch the back-and-forth below. Jeva Lange
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