Trump's taxes leaked

[Starlight]

I'm disputing your claim that using legal means to skirt taxes is immoral. No, it's not immoral, it's smart

I don't think under any circumstances it is "smart".

I would say it's not immoral in the situation where you make the tax declarations as accurate as possible with regard to describing your situation and the origin and nature of the money, and the tax-codes provides a lower rate for somebody in your situation.

I would say it's immoral where you go out looking for loopholes and discounts, and get creative with the ways you are choosing to organize your money and what categories you declare it in, in order to pay less taxes. At that point you are intentionally stealing from everybody in the country, because you are setting out to pay a lower amount of money toward the collective good than has been collectively agreed is appropriate for a person in your position. That's immoral. You're harming others. You're selfishly setting out to benefit yourself at the expense of others.

[Leonhard]

I'm disputing your claim that using legal means to skirt taxes is immoral. No, it's not immoral, it's smart, especially if you believe the government you pay taxes to that is supposed to serve you is itself immoral.

I disagree, but then again I donīt believe that government should be reduced to a post office and a coast guard. I am not a libertarian. The government is there to be the functions that the common man cannot do for himself. Military, law, police, fire departments, social welfare, healthcare, regulating businesses (otherwise they'd reinstitute indentured servitude and sell houses built on top of toxic waste dumps).

No one wants to pay taxes.

We can agree on that.

If you don't like the tax loopholes then that's up to the folks you vote in office the correct that.

You're assuming we're living in a democracy. Wake up seanD, the common man has next to no control over these things. Studies continously show that if people want a law and big business doesn't want it then it never gets passed. Why? Because most of the campaign finances come from wealthy donators. No politician, or any political party for that matter can afford to lose that revenue stream. About the only thing that big business doesn't control in the US is the Supreme Court, and even there you had a lot of corruption with plenty of the members getting all sorts of side-benefits from anonymous donors.

All billionaires without exception contribute to that, even the supposedly good ones like Warren Buffet, Bill Gates or George Soros. None of them are good.

That they're not paying taxes on top of all the evil their businesses are doing is just one last insult.

Swines the lot of them.

[seanD]

I disagree, but then again I donīt believe that government should be reduced to a post office and a coast guard. I am not a libertarian. The government is there to be the functions that the common man cannot do for himself. Military, law, police, fire departments, social welfare, healthcare, regulating businesses (otherwise they'd reinstitute indentured servitude and sell houses built on top of toxic waste dumps).



We can agree on that.



You're assuming we're living in a democracy. Wake up seanD, the common man has next to no control over these things. Studies continously show that if people want a law and big business doesn't want it then it never gets passed. Why? Because most of the campaign finances come from wealthy donators. No politician, or any political party for that matter can afford to lose that revenue stream. About the only thing that big business doesn't control in the US is the Supreme Court, and even there you had a lot of corruption with plenty of the members getting all sorts of side-benefits from anonymous donors.

All billionaires without exception contribute to that, even the supposedly good ones like Warren Buffet, Bill Gates or George Soros. None of them are good.

That they're not paying taxes on top of all the evil their businesses are doing is just one last insult.

Swines the lot of them.

I said government is evil but I never made an argument about whether it was necessary or not. It is what it is. But I don't have to feel like I have a moral obligation to pay more taxes to an evil government than I legally have to, neither does anyone else. You are right but you just have it twisted. Billionaires are evil, no question, but for other reasons, not because they use legal ways to not pay taxes. There's nothing whatsoever immoral about not paying taxes legally.

[Mountain Man]

That's a rather misleading retelling of what happened. You're correct that I assumed it was produced by CBS since it aired there (and I'm not even 100% on that) and I really don't care about which production company does what because why would I follow that. The point of pasting the makeup credits was to demonstrate that the show already had a full complement of makeup and hair folks so there would be little reason for Trump to spend $70k in just one year on hair.

And the typical standard for these sorts of things is "reasonable and customary." $70k per year on hair is neither reasonable nor customary.

This is one of those posts that essentially says, "Okay, I was wrong, but I'm still right."

[Ronson]

Forbes:
Trump’s Golf Trips Could Cost Taxpayers Over $340 Million
United States Accountability Office:
https://www.gao.gov/assets/700/696512.pdf
Trump Golf Count Blog:
https://trumpgolfcount.com/displayoutings

At least 60000$ worth of expenses has been logged for a golf trip paid to Mar-A-Lago over the course of a few days. And when you consider that he's gone 190 times out of 193 times to Trump resorts, that alone already wracks up 3 million. And that doesn't count the other political events that were much greater than he held at those places which I'd honestly surprised weren't significantly bigger than that number.

This is why I asked about a source.

When he was campaigning President Trump frequently bashed President Obama for playing golf and said that he would be too busy to play. Per a HuffPost article he said, “I love golf, but if I were in the White House, I don’t think I’d ever see Turnberry again. I don’t think I’d ever see Doral again,” he told a rally audience in February 2016, referring to his course near the Miami airport. “I don’t ever think I’d see anything. I just want to stay in the White House and work my ass off.”

A Forbes article referencing a HuffPost article instead of referencing the actual Trump quote. I consider HuffPost as reliable as World News.

It took less than two weeks before he broke that promise vs. Obama not playing his first round until he had been in office for about three months and Obama didn’t visit a course outside of the DC area until August 2009, seven months after his inauguration. One reason Trump has been able to play so much golf is that he inherited an economy that was in very good shape vs. Obama taking office in the teeth of the Great Recession.

I don't so much care that he broke his promise that he wouldn't play as much golf as Obama and ended up playing golf three times as often, but you've lost your mind if you think he's renting out Mar-A-Lago for free.

What promise? The reference in HuffPost didn't even include a promise.

Yes, presidents waste taxpayer money by traveling around and taking vacations - and Trump is no exception. I'd like to see some rules applied to them to restrain that but it will never happen.

If he had an actual income, then I'd say that those loopholes amount to legal crime. If he doesn't have one and is bleeding money then I guess it's fair, then its the investors fault for putting money into his businesses and that's on them. But for some like Larry Ellison who barely pays a nickel in cash. No they're scum, and as far as I'm concerned they all ought to be locked up and their businesses radically dismantled.

I don't lump all billionaires together in that fashion.

[Sparko]

Yes it does but you can have the last word if it's just going to be some variation on "I doubt it."

Trump was an executive producer on the series. They put up the money. They can write off expenses.

[Sparko]

Source: https://www.dailywire.com/news/nyt-bombshell-report-on-trump-taxes-missing-one-key-word-illegal

In a statement to the Times included in the report, Garten slammed one of the key premises of the article. “While you claim that President Trump paid no taxes in 10 of the 15 previous years, you also assert that President Trump claimed a massive refund for tens of millions for taxes he did pay,” Garten told the Times. “These two claims are entirely inconsistent and, in any event, not supported by the facts.”

© Copyright Original Source

[LiconaFan97]

Trump was an executive producer on the series. They put up the money. They can write off expenses.

$70k per year is the equivalent of someone's income who makes $35 / hour. But it's even worse than that since the show took far less than a year to film. Since it probably took less than a 1/4 of the year to film (I assume closer to a handul of weeks but I don't really know) it's probably closer to someone who makes $140 / hour. There is no way to possibly claim that is "reasonable and customary."

And they had a full staff of makeup etc. already hired!

[Sparko]

$70k per year is the equivalent of someone's income who makes $35 / hour. But it's even worse than that since the show took far less than a year to film. So it's probably closer to someone who makes $100 / hour. There is no way to possibly claim that is "reasonable and customary."

That aside, wouldn't it have been Trump Productions who took the deduction, not Trump personally?

I was just answering the point someone made that he didn't have any way to write off such things. At this point I don't even know if the claim that he wrote off hair dressing as an expense is even true, or what the circumstances were or if it was on his personal taxes or corporate ones. This whole thing is just a rumor at this point. They haven't shown any actual evidence of anything.

[LiconaFan97]

This is one of those posts that essentially says, "Okay, I was wrong, but I'm still right."

Right, I was wrong about an incidental detail but correct in substance. Don't tell me you're one of those who claims a gun control argument is invalid because someone says "clip" instead of "magazine" are you?

[Mountain Man]

Right, I was wrong about an incidental detail but correct in substance. Don't tell me you're one of those who claims a gun control argument is invalid because someone says "clip" instead of "magazine" are you?

I believe the colloquial term for your argument is "pissing in the wind".

[LiconaFan97]

I was just answering the point someone made that he didn't have any way to write off such things. At this point I don't even know if the claim that he wrote off hair dressing as an expense is even true, or what the circumstances were or if it was on his personal taxes or corporate ones. This whole thing is just a rumor at this point. They haven't shown any actual evidence of anything.

It doesn't matter if it was personal or business. He still owned the business and directly benefited.

So lets leave things here: If it can be shown that he actually wrote off the equivalent of someone earning $140/hour for his hair, when he already had a full staff on hand, wouldn't you agree that that is a bad look? That deduction along almost certainly saved him more in taxes than I personally paid! It probably saved more than all of us on this board paid.

[LiconaFan97]

I believe the colloquial term for your argument is "pissing in the wind".

I'm under no illusion about how productive dialogue with you is. But I know in your gut you know that this is wrong, even if legal. Any system which allows someone with (according to you) 10-100x as much money as all of us put together paying less in taxes for at least 13 of the past 18 years is just broken. And Trump controlled the Congress 2017-2019 and not only didn't fix it he made it worse. And set up to take health insurance away from 20M+ in the bargain.

[LiconaFan97]

Biden and Harris released their 2019 taxes. Will Trump follow suit, or is he already "under audit"?

[CivilDiscourse]

Biden and Harris released their 2019 taxes. Will Trump follow suit, or is he already "under audit"?

As stated, given that Democrats will either lie or result to illegal means about the tax returns. It's better to not release them, and let the democrats do the immoral stuff to release them, and then call them out on it.