How does Trump justify not releasing his taxes?

[Anonymous]

Simple. He's a lying liar who lies. And gullible people believe him.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Simple. He's a lying liar who lies. And gullible people believe him.

I'm not even sure that they believe him...I think they just don't care. It's truly mystifying.

[Anonymous]

The "audit" excuse is fraudulent. The IRS themselves said so.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:He doesn't want to, so he didn't. Obviously, he didn't have to.

Duh.

[Anonymous]

1. There is no legal requirement for a presidential candidate to release his tax returns as a private citizen.

2. Leftists are irrational when they say they need to see his tax returns to decide whether or not to vote for him. If you feel failure of a candidate to release tax returns is disqualifying in your opinion, you don't need to see the returns to NOT vote for him. I assume those of you who deemed his failure to release his returns disqualifying, did NOT vote for him. Therefore, his tax returns are completely irrelevant.

3. If you are angry under the assumption that he took full advantage of loopholes available only to billionaires, and that's disqualifying, again--don't vote for him. You don't need to see the returns to not vote for him.

4. Unless you are a highly experienced forensic tax accountant, you will not have any hope of understanding whatever is actually in his tax returns.

5. Most of us are not highly experienced forensic tax accountants and therefore are probably not even qualified to make any conclusions based on a review of his tax returns, which--let's face it, no one is actually going to bother doing, since they're probably hundreds or thousands of pages long.

6. If the idea is that you don't want to review them yourselves, but want to expose Trump to political harm via review of his tax returns by his political adversaries--well, again, you don't need his actual tax returns to NOT vote against him. If he's disqualified as presidential material, in your eyes, for failure to release the returns, he can't be even more disqualified based on whatever is in the returns.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Simple. He's a lying liar who lies. And gullible people believe him.

If you think he's a liar who lies, then that's disqualifying, and presumably you didn't vote for him. Therefore, his actual tax returns are irrelevant and you don't need to see them. Other people can make that same decision for themselves. They don't need you to do it for them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The "audit" excuse is fraudulent. The IRS themselves said so.

If you believe Trump committed fraud using the audit excuse, then presumably, you didn't vote for him based on that. Therefore, his tax returns themselves are totally irrelevant. You can't NOT vote for him twice in the same election, for two different reasons, can you? (Well maybe if you're one of those dead people that vote Democratic in Chicago you could vote against Trump more than once.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Simple. He's a lying liar who lies. And gullible people believe him.

I'm not even sure that they believe him...I think they just don't care. It's truly mystifying.

I don't care.

Why should I care what's in his tax returns?

I already know he's a billionaire who is probably taking all kinds of crazy deductions unavailable to the common man or woman. I would ASSUME he's maxing deductions and tax loopholes, that's one of the reasons he's a billionaire. Paying as little as possible to the tax man is one of the strategies that helps rich people get that way and stay that way.

I don't need to see Trump's tax returns to assume he's doing all of that. In terms of "I don't care," I would care if he wasn't maxing his tax deductions and loopholes since that would indicate he isn't too smart.

In terms of is he or is he not a tax cheat, I'm going to have to assume that whether or not there are any on-going audits, that the IRS would audit his returns if it thinks it needs to, and if he's suspected of committing a crime, refer it to the Justice Department. Not my job, not your job, I'm certainly not competent to review someone else's tax return and determine what it means, and most likely, neither are you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Simple. He's a lying liar who lies. And gullible people believe him.

I'm not even sure that they believe him...I think they just don't care. It's truly mystifying.

I don't care.

Why should I care what's in his tax returns?

I already know he's a billionaire who is probably taking all kinds of crazy deductions unavailable to the common man or woman. I would ASSUME he's maxing deductions and tax loopholes, that's one of the reasons he's a billionaire. Paying as little as possible to the tax man is one of the strategies that helps rich people get that way and stay that way.

I don't need to see Trump's tax returns to assume he's doing all of that. In terms of "I don't care," I would care if he wasn't maxing his tax deductions and loopholes since that would indicate he isn't too smart.

In terms of is he or is he not a tax cheat, I'm going to have to assume that whether or not there are any on-going audits, that the IRS would audit his returns if it thinks it needs to, and if he's suspected of committing a crime, refer it to the Justice Department. Not my job, not your job, I'm certainly not competent to review someone else's tax return and determine what it means, and most likely, neither are you.

Does the lack of transparency bother you? What is he hiding? We've had other wealthy candidates and presidents, most of whom took advantage of all the tax deductions and loopholes they could, and they released their tax returns.

Not only is Trump possibly hiding something, but he's made excuses and promises to show his tax returns and then hasn't. Just like he was going to hold a press conference about his conflict of interests in business and how he was going to address that. And then he didn't.

So strange that a country preoccupied with the honesty and integrity of Hillary Clinton will excuse all the lying, cheating, scheming and machinations of Trump. What's at the bottom of it?

[Anonymous]

Obviously the PP who posted around 4:30 is the same for all of those posts.

I think the issue is that 1) in the post Nixon era, it has become the norm for Presidential candidates to release their tax forms so the public can scruitinize their sources of income and potential conflicts of interest.

Trump didn't do that. The question of HIS conflicts of interest and foreign obligations are at issue and are a huge stake in this political cycle.

Would Trump have made it through the Primaries if it were know, hypothetically, that he had $700 Million of debt to Russian interests and another $500M of debt to Chinese interests?

Maybe. Maybe not. But wouldn't it be better to know that so his choices for the Cabinet and National Security posts would be known to be legitimate rather than puppet like?

At the moment, every single one of his choices comes under the cloud of suspicion and only posters like the one around 4:30AM seem to be willing to turn a blind eye and give Trump the benefit of the doubt.

Trump, through his words and actions, and inability to show veracity in his pronouncements has not earned the trust of benefit of the doubt for the 74% of eligible voters who didn't support him.

If he wants to claim this legitimacy, then he has to earn it.

[Anonymous]

Because he's the boss and everyone should just listen to him and nobody really cares if he doesn't comply...or some such.

Note: that's how most crazy dictators rise to power. Same mentality on the part of the dictator and the followers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Obviously the PP who posted around 4:30 is the same for all of those posts.

I think the issue is that 1) in the post Nixon era, it has become the norm for Presidential candidates to release their tax forms [b]so the public can scruitinize their sources of income and potential conflicts of interest.

Trump didn't do that. The question of HIS conflicts of interest and foreign obligations are at issue and are a huge stake in this political cycle.

Would Trump have made it through the Primaries if it were know, hypothetically, that he had $700 Million of debt to Russian interests and another $500M of debt to Chinese interests?

Maybe. Maybe not. But wouldn't it be better to know that so his choices for the Cabinet and National Security posts would be known to be legitimate rather than puppet like?

At the moment, every single one of his choices comes under the cloud of suspicion and only posters like the one around 4:30AM seem to be willing to turn a blind eye and give Trump the benefit of the doubt.

Trump, through his words and actions, and inability to show veracity in his pronouncements has not earned the trust of benefit of the doubt for the 74% of eligible voters who didn't support him.

If he wants to claim this legitimacy, then he has to earn it.

The bolded would not be discoverable from his tax returns.

The easy solution to this is to make a more robust financial disclosure law for politicians.

But, that would require a lot more disclosure from the darlings of the DNC too . . .

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Simple. He's a lying liar who lies. And gullible people believe him.

I'm not even sure that they believe him...I think they just don't care. It's truly mystifying.

I don't care.

Why should I care what's in his tax returns?

I already know he's a billionaire who is probably taking all kinds of crazy deductions unavailable to the common man or woman. I would ASSUME he's maxing deductions and tax loopholes, that's one of the reasons he's a billionaire. Paying as little as possible to the tax man is one of the strategies that helps rich people get that way and stay that way.

I don't need to see Trump's tax returns to assume he's doing all of that. In terms of "I don't care," I would care if he wasn't maxing his tax deductions and loopholes since that would indicate he isn't too smart.

In terms of is he or is he not a tax cheat, I'm going to have to assume that whether or not there are any on-going audits, that the IRS would audit his returns if it thinks it needs to, and if he's suspected of committing a crime, refer it to the Justice Department. Not my job, not your job, I'm certainly not competent to review someone else's tax return and determine what it means, and most likely, neither are you.

Wrong! He's a millionaire not a billionaire.

[Anonymous]

Ha-ha, did "someone's friend" leaked he's not paying taxes? What's the butthurt about?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Simple. He's a lying liar who lies. And gullible people believe him.

I'm not even sure that they believe him...I think they just don't care. It's truly mystifying.

I don't care.

Why should I care what's in his tax returns?

I already know he's a billionaire who is probably taking all kinds of crazy deductions unavailable to the common man or woman. I would ASSUME he's maxing deductions and tax loopholes, that's one of the reasons he's a billionaire. Paying as little as possible to the tax man is one of the strategies that helps rich people get that way and stay that way.

I don't need to see Trump's tax returns to assume he's doing all of that. In terms of "I don't care," I would care if he wasn't maxing his tax deductions and loopholes since that would indicate he isn't too smart.

In terms of is he or is he not a tax cheat, I'm going to have to assume that whether or not there are any on-going audits, that the IRS would audit his returns if it thinks it needs to, and if he's suspected of committing a crime, refer it to the Justice Department. Not my job, not your job, I'm certainly not competent to review someone else's tax return and determine what it means, and most likely, neither are you.

Does the lack of transparency bother you? What is he hiding? We've had other wealthy candidates and presidents, most of whom took advantage of all the tax deductions and loopholes they could, and they released their tax returns.

Not only is Trump possibly hiding something, but he's made excuses and promises to show his tax returns and then hasn't. Just like he was going to hold a press conference about his conflict of interests in business and how he was going to address that. And then he didn't.

So strange that a country preoccupied with the honesty and integrity of Hillary Clinton will excuse all the lying, cheating, scheming and machinations of Trump. What's at the bottom of it?

1. The lack of transparency bothers me not at all. Tax returns are private. It's his choice to disclose them as a political ploy or not and risk losing the election by not disclosing them. Each of us can decide to vote for him or not based on the non-disclosure. The point is, you can make the decision to vote for him, or not, based on the non-disclosure, and that completely negates the need to see the tax returns themselves. You're free to ASSUME he's a tax cheat, and I'm free to ASSUME he's not. Trump himself evidently believed that a sufficient number of people would ASSUME he is not a tax cheat so that he would be elected. He was right. You were wrong. That was a political gamble that he took. He won. If more people cared about it, he'd have lost. Any way you slice it, you don't actually need to see his tax returns at all.

2. If Trump's failure to disclose the returns and excuses bothers you, you're free not to vote for him. The problem here is not the tax returns at all--it's that the electorate wasn't as upset about his non-disclosure as you are.

3. Trump didn't "lie, cheat, scheme" etc. by non-disclosure of his tax returns. He exercised a legal right to keep them private. In doing so, he took a real risk that he would lose the election because he failed to disclose his returns. He won that particular gamble, which angers you, because not enough voters agreed that it's necessary to see his returns as a private citizen.

4. The country was preoccupied with HRC's integrity because she premised her campaign on the proposition that Donald Trump was an evil man, the King of the Deplorables, and she was a shining example of upstanding moral integrity, at least in comparison to him. Under the circumstances, that was a stupid mistake on her part. She should have simply highlighted her government experience and policy differences with Trump, not tried to portray him as an ethically and morally evil guy. That tactic backfired on her big time. She has only herself to blame for the attention paid in the campaign to issues revolving her own integrity.