Trump Sues Ways and Means and NY Officials to protect tax returns

[Fenixgoon]

Analysis of Trump's taxes:

New York Daily News Says Donald Trump's Tax Returns Prove 2 Things

The tax returns puncture claims that are central to the former president's story, an editorial points out.

news.yahoo.com

- the former president was “not so rich or smart” as he brags.
- he is just “a bad businessman who racked up huge losses,”

“He’s not such a rich man,” the board said. “His adjusted gross income was negative, mostly from a Net Operating Loss carryover of $105,157,825. He had to pay the IRS $707,123. No wonder the fraud didn’t want Americans to see.”


he lost 9 figures?!
was his dad worth 9 figures?

to be fair, the 9 figures as you have listed above is "merely" $105M. add a 10th figure, and now we're talking some buy-twitter-and-run-it-into-the-ground kind of money

 

[UNCjigga]

So the net story I’m getting from analysis of these returns is that…there is no smoking gun as far as crimes, tax evasion (no more than usual for this income bracket) or being compromised to foreign interests. We already knew about his inflating/deflating real estate asset valuation as it suited him.

Basically, DJT could’ve released all of his returns as President and this would’ve faded to a non-story, a nothing-burger. But he couldn’t stand to have people look at him from across the room knowing “lol, you lost all of daddy’s money”, or even worse, “I’m richer than you’ll ever be pal”—so that’s why he had to avoid releasing returns and pay all those attorney fees.

 

[Pens1566]

So the net story I’m getting from analysis of these returns is that…there is no smoking gun as far as crimes, tax evasion (no more than usual for this income bracket) or being compromised to foreign interests. We already knew about his inflating/deflating real estate asset valuation as it suited him.

Basically, DJT could’ve released all of his returns as President and this would’ve faded to a non-story, a nothing-burger. But he couldn’t stand to have people look at him from across the room knowing “lol, you lost all of daddy’s money”, or even worse, “I’m richer than you’ll ever be pal”—so that’s why he had to avoid releasing returns and pay all those attorney fees.

I'd agree, except you can't definitively state there's no evasion just based on the taxes themselves. I'd almost guarantee there is, but it would take a full (rather complicated I'm guessing) audit. Which will likely never happen.

 

[eelw]

I'd agree, except you can't definitively state there's no evasion just based on the taxes themselves. I'd almost guarantee there is, but it would take a full (rather complicated I'm guessing) audit. Which will likely never happen.

Yup that one 42,xxx investment that gave the identical profit and expense. Cooking the books? NEVER!!!

 

[Commodus]

I certainly wouldn't be surprised if there was some tax fraud. But you could argue that Occam's Razor applies here: Trump mainly wanted to keep the returns secret because they burst the myth that he wants to maintain.

He's not the strong businessman who 'deserves' to run the country; he's a frequent failure who relies on accounting tricks, legal obstruction and public image manipulation to appear more successful. The Dems don't have to bring up criminal activity to get under Trump's skin; they just have to point out that there are many wealthier tycoons whose businesses are consistently profitable.

 

[uclaLabrat]

I'd agree, except you can't definitively state there's no evasion just based on the taxes themselves. I'd almost guarantee there is, but it would take a full (rather complicated I'm guessing) audit. Which will likely never happen.

And add to that examples of potential foreign influence are likely hidden unter multiple shell orgs and would take a hell of a lot of work to untangle.

 

[gorobei]

interview with Steve Rosenthal of the Brookings tax policy center on the returns. he covers trumptydumpty's general approach to evading taxes through hiding gains in a pile of shell companies and under-reporting. also the irs is so understaffed that a single agent was assigned to audit his returns while in office and so overwhelmed by the byzantine structuring that they opted to assume his tax accountants were reporting correctly.

 

[fskimospy]

So the net story I’m getting from analysis of these returns is that…there is no smoking gun as far as crimes, tax evasion (no more than usual for this income bracket) or being compromised to foreign interests. We already knew about his inflating/deflating real estate asset valuation as it suited him.

Basically, DJT could’ve released all of his returns as President and this would’ve faded to a non-story, a nothing-burger. But he couldn’t stand to have people look at him from across the room knowing “lol, you lost all of daddy’s money”, or even worse, “I’m richer than you’ll ever be pal”—so that’s why he had to avoid releasing returns and pay all those attorney fees.

This is very different than what I’ve read, which is basically that to find smoking guns will be a time intensive affair as this is a maze of shell companies, etc.So basically to figure out what’s going on here you not only need the finances for Trump himself, you need the finances of the companies he’s doing business with, etc.

For example when Trump was caught committing criminal tax fraud by the NYT they had to tie together forms from Trump’s dad’s business to businesses his kids were the beneficiaries of, then you had to check individual transactions to catch the fraudulent markups.

I would bet large sums of money that multiple crimes are eventually uncovered by a real investigation into his taxes but that will take a long time. Certainly there are so many red flags in the returns already that the IRS should be devoting resources here.