Five Points On The Many Questions Raised By Trump’s Tax Returns | Talking Points Memo

After years and countless court battles spent shielding them, President Trump’s tax returns are finally out.


This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1334746
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“The New York Times got ahold of years of both President Trump’s personal returns and those of his businesses through 2017, revealing massive write-offs, huge liabilities set to come due soon, and inexplicably huge losses throughout.”

I guess if they’re taxes through 2017 then many/all of the debts due in the next 4 years may already have been paid off by his various patrons in other nations’ governments

“To Eric Allen, a former auditor and associate professor of accounting at UC-Riverdale”

There is no such UC…

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Oh, wouldn’t that be delicious…

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The big picture is that Spanky has his financial nuts in a vise, and that his short-term financial future is the bleakest of bleak, with a possible repayment of the $73 million IRS refund and the $300 million in personally guaranteed loans coming up.

The details are many, and are sure to be riddled with lies, fabrications, and crimes. But, the big picture is that he’s desperate to stay in office to avoid both financial ruin and jail.

He’ll fight like a wounded wolverine to stay in the White House.

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If all the tax games outlined in this and other articles turn out to be legitimate it only serves to confirm the impression that the growing power of useless capitalists and bullshit artists like Trump leads to what power always leads to: the development of a system that perpetuates and strengthens the source of their power.

ETA: I keep coming back to how impressed Alexis de Tocqueville (1835) was with the fact that US laws prevented the implementation of aristocratic estate conveyance (fee entail, primogeniture) thus fostering a dynamic, egalitarian society that avoided the social sclerosis of Europe. But that was then, this is now, and the wealthy have succeeded in fully resurrecting their status and power via corporate, estate and trust law with the bonus that divisibility of modern financial assets now allows lesser scions of noble houses access to the same legally protected, intergenerational trough that was once the exclusive right of firstborn. Most of the super-wealthy in the US will be heirs rather than entrepreneurs; e.g., Billionaire Bonanza 2018

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There is one fixed point in the universe:
Trump is always worse than we thought.

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OT, but I’m jonesing for the debate tomorrow night.

It’ll be lit.

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Who would lend someone over $300 million without security? The guy has real estate holdings that any bank would insist on having deeds to as security. There’s no way he has anything like that in liquid assets and what the value of resorts and golf courses and even if they could be sold at all in the current environment is speculative to say the least.

It’s often said that he punted on Covid to keep the stock market up. That may have been a bit of the reason, but Donald doesn’t have a lot of his money in stocks and bonds. No, Covid was a direct threat to his businesses and he knew it. And for that, people died…

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Come on, creative photoshoppers. How hard to change $15 to $750 and make the Monopoly guy into BLOTUS?
Dial Down Premium to Make an LTCI Policy More Affordable – Synergy

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Professors Archie and Jughead would disagree… :slight_smile:

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More than $400 million of those liabilities come due over the next four years, the Times reported, though it’s not clear if the lenders in question (their identities are unknown) would be willing to restructure.

That’s simply not true!

Putin has made very clear to Chiselin’ Trump exactly what he has to do in order to receive favorable debt restructuring.

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I think that I’ll be too.

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So, the things that jump out at me are:

  1. The supposedly unsecured loans. That much cash…there has to be some side deal going on to guarantee those loans. That they are unsecured means he can write off losses, if I’m understanding what I read, but as others have said, nobody’s gonna loan that much money without some guarantee more than this guy’s “word.”

  2. Ivanka as a consultant. If Trump could move that much money, let’s have a look at her reported income, please.

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The only real estate he apparently owns are golf courses. The only golf courses making money are expertly managed, not his skill set. Banks etc want no part of them.
Apparently he has only paid interest, no principle, on things like trump tower and such. Banks etc already hold that paper.
He’s broke.

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Depreciation of real property has been a somewhat strange thing, as unless you turn it into a toxic waste site, the resale value seems to almost always increase. Yes, the amount depreciated does lower the “purchase price”, profit= sale-price - (price paid - depreciation taken), but the depreciation can be used against any kind of income, while the profit gets taxed at the lower capital gains rate…

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UC Riverside, probably an honest mistake.

http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=yG_t15YAAAAJ&hl=en

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A few years ago I had the distinct honor of filing a gift tax return for early inheritances given to my sons. Of course, nowhere near rich enough to have to pay gift tax on the measly $100K gifts, but I sure learned why the idle rich hate that estate tax (same thing) so much - once you hit the $5M threshold, “giver” has to cough up 40% of the gift.

Inotherwords, if Trump actually gave the Lust Object money instead of “consulting” her, not only would he lose the business expense deduction but would get a 40% whammy on top of it. Which is the way it’s supposed to work, if you’re not part of a crime family.

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I keep coming back to this:

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“But he’s just like me (me me me)!”

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This is worth a read


A key point is that over the 18 years covered, Trump only earned $ 4.2 million income from assets, or about $ 220,000/year. This implies a net worth in the $ 5 million range, not billions…

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