The BIG ONE: 20 years of Trump taxes obtained by NYTs

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Didn't we learn this years ago?

Yeah, I sure hope this puts an end to the "but he donates his salary!" BS praise.

It won't though. It's not about actual claims or facts -- it's about cult of personality.

[Anonymous]

The IRS is not stupid. People like Trump and all other very rich people have relationships with the IRS in a way most of us don't. The IRS spends a lot of time on Trump's taxes. They have for decades. They don't merely accept the tax returns without questions. A loud mouthed public figure like Trump isn't going to have been able to hide tax fraud for the last 20 years.

Meanwhile, Trump pays whole teams of clever accountants and lawyers to do his taxes and the sad reality is that it's all quite legit.

It's just like the Meuller report where the method of investigation turned out to be legally more dubious than anything found on Trump himself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I must admit I am amused that the Democrats spent years trying to prove Trump broke laws only for the FBI and Meuller investigations to break laws in their investigations of Trump. And someone broke laws in leaking the Trump taxes to the NYT only to show that Trump didn't break any tax laws either. You may not like the taxes or lack of taxes but he was in compliance of the US tax code. And someone at the DA office in NY definitely did something illegal in the leaking.

Shrugs. Yeah, it's still bad for Trump's persona but I'm more bothered by the hyperpartisan Democrats' willingness to break laws in trying to bring Trump down. I get that you don't like the guy but they've turned themselves into bitter caricatures in the process.

There are a number of things in there that aren’t in compliance with the tax code.

Such as...

By the way, you still don't have the documents. You have purported documents from an anonymous source, released at a time not for journalistic inquiry, but to hurt Trump's election. This is a fabricated hit job.

This would be incredibly easy for Trump and his campaign to refute. They could release his tax returns. But Trump just said he won't do that. They could send them on to a trusted buddy at the WSJ editorial board or somewhere who could write a response article refuting the NYT article. But they won't do that because... Do you know why?

Haha, why would he need to refute anything? It's perfectly clear from this thread that only the ignorant are angry about this. It's not Trump's job to teach people basic principles of business taxes and accounting, especially related to real estate investments.

If you are a seeker of truth, why not heed the advice of people who obviously know more about taxes and real estate investments than you. Why continue to wallow in your outrage, instead of taking a moment to educate yourself. I thought Democrats valued the advice of experts.

I've asked multiple times how Ivanka can be paid as an employee and a contractor and no one has answered. Please educate me!

The situation is unusual, but I can certainly imagine instances where it is done. For example, if a person has a normal employee job with a company as an accountant, performing work as directed by the company, but also works as a contractor for recruitment - referring new hires by reading/understanding the job requirements but looking for matching candidates using their own methods and determining their own work schedule, in their own separate workspace.

There is nothing in law that specifically says that a person cannot be both an employee and a contractor when doing very different tasks. However, for doing the same set of work, a person is either an employee or a contractor, but not both. In this situation, we don't know what the nature of work is.

Right, but we do know Ivanka's areas of "expertise." She doesn't exactly have a diverse skill set, does she?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The IRS is not stupid. People like Trump and all other very rich people have relationships with the IRS in a way most of us don't. The IRS spends a lot of time on Trump's taxes. They have for decades. They don't merely accept the tax returns without questions. A loud mouthed public figure like Trump isn't going to have been able to hide tax fraud for the last 20 years.

Meanwhile, Trump pays whole teams of clever accountants and lawyers to do his taxes and the sad reality is that it's all quite legit.

It's just like the Meuller report where the method of investigation turned out to be legally more dubious than anything found on Trump himself.

This is a fantasy.

But it sure is comforting, isn't it?

(Read the article about Fred Trump's tax fraud, if you want to dip your toes into reality.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I will explain how a person can be an employee and an independent contractor. During the week, Ivanka comes to the office where she works 40 hrs a week. She is an employee. On weekend, she comes to clean the said office as independent contractor, so she gets paid separately.

Lol. I love how the accountants on this thread refuse to cite any tax code and then post crap like this and complain about the uneducated. I'm educated enough to know this is BS.

Your sarcasmometer needs adjusting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Trump lied in his financial disclosures.

"In 2018, for example, Mr. Trump announced in his disclosure that he had made at least $434.9 million. The tax records deliver a very different portrait of his bottom line: $47.4 million in losses."

Wonder if PP ever heard of EBIDTA?

Why let facts and accounting get in the way of outrage. People want to be useful idiots, they seek the chance to be one, it validates the purpose of their otherwise meaningless existence.

Cheer up, Brad.

LOL, you think I'm sad... anyone who knows even simple accounting understands that there is nothing to see here. Without the original documents plus a lot of contextual information, there is simply no conclusion to be drawn and we certainly don't trust NYT to be fair and balanced. So the result is that NYT got nothing more than some innuendos and accusations, which amounts to a hill of beans in front of educated people. And while it does rile up the uneducated (in terms of accounting), the ignorant people have characteristically short attention spans, and this will all be washed away by their new outrage two weeks from now. Terrible timing on the part of NYT.

The people of the United States of America have wanted to see the president's tax returns for 4 years. Why? Not because we're accountants or tax experts but because that's how our country works.

Trump has put up all sorts of disgusting and quasi-legal roadblocks to prevent that. As a lawyer, I'm outraged at his lawlessness and lack of presidential behavior. Maybe you think his accounting is above-board. Please write a letter to the NYT or WaPo or the WSJ and explain all the issues that the NYT article has highlighted. You'll convince some people why it's not actually bad. Maybe.

In sum, this won't go away. Trump's tax returns have been a big deal for years. They won't just fade away.

Oh? Is that a legal requirement? Show me the law.

For a lawyer you seem rather irrational. Why would your professional standing as a lawyer give you any type of authority on presidential behavior? You also seem not particularly attentive to the facts. I have not said this accounting is above-board. No accountant would ever make such a claim. You as a professional opinion-giver should know this. What I've said is that the information shared thus far do not seem out of the ordinary. If we have other information, including original documents, plus contextual documents, along with some analysis, then maybe we will find something that is either incorrect or outright fraud. But we are not there yet, we are far from it.

I'd hate to be paying for your billable hours.

And yet, you demanded Obama prove he was a US born citizen because Trump spouted other lies, despite zero legal obligation for Obama to produce said evidence.

You have me confused with someone else, I never called for Obama to release his birth certificate publicly. I figure they vetted his qualifications when he became a candidate. That's good enough for me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Trump lied in his financial disclosures.

"In 2018, for example, Mr. Trump announced in his disclosure that he had made at least $434.9 million. The tax records deliver a very different portrait of his bottom line: $47.4 million in losses."

Wonder if PP ever heard of EBIDTA?

EBITDA isn’t a part of tax accounting, it’s a way of representing financial results that backs out interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization that can skew net income numbers depending on the how much debt the company carries, what tax authorities they’re subject to, etc., so as to more accurately represent a company’s operating performance.

It also isn’t relevant to what the pp is talking about, because the disclosure statement reflects revenues, which isn’t the same as EBITDA, in that EBITDA deducts operating expenses from revenues.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The IRS is not stupid. People like Trump and all other very rich people have relationships with the IRS in a way most of us don't. The IRS spends a lot of time on Trump's taxes. They have for decades. They don't merely accept the tax returns without questions. A loud mouthed public figure like Trump isn't going to have been able to hide tax fraud for the last 20 years.

Meanwhile, Trump pays whole teams of clever accountants and lawyers to do his taxes and the sad reality is that it's all quite legit.

It's just like the Meuller report where the method of investigation turned out to be legally more dubious than anything found on Trump himself.

Except it isn’t.

I am entertained endlessly by Trump supporters on here who are entirely convinced that everything Donald does is brilliant and totally on the up and up and all the liberals posting on here are just ignorant buttholes who don’t know anything about business or money even though every other time we’re coastal elites who have too much money.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I must admit I am amused that the Democrats spent years trying to prove Trump broke laws only for the FBI and Meuller investigations to break laws in their investigations of Trump. And someone broke laws in leaking the Trump taxes to the NYT only to show that Trump didn't break any tax laws either. You may not like the taxes or lack of taxes but he was in compliance of the US tax code. And someone at the DA office in NY definitely did something illegal in the leaking.

Shrugs. Yeah, it's still bad for Trump's persona but I'm more bothered by the hyperpartisan Democrats' willingness to break laws in trying to bring Trump down. I get that you don't like the guy but they've turned themselves into bitter caricatures in the process.

There are a number of things in there that aren’t in compliance with the tax code.

Such as...

By the way, you still don't have the documents. You have purported documents from an anonymous source, released at a time not for journalistic inquiry, but to hurt Trump's election. This is a fabricated hit job.

This would be incredibly easy for Trump and his campaign to refute. They could release his tax returns. But Trump just said he won't do that. They could send them on to a trusted buddy at the WSJ editorial board or somewhere who could write a response article refuting the NYT article. But they won't do that because... Do you know why?

Haha, why would he need to refute anything? It's perfectly clear from this thread that only the ignorant are angry about this. It's not Trump's job to teach people basic principles of business taxes and accounting, especially related to real estate investments.

If you are a seeker of truth, why not heed the advice of people who obviously know more about taxes and real estate investments than you. Why continue to wallow in your outrage, instead of taking a moment to educate yourself. I thought Democrats valued the advice of experts.

I've asked multiple times how Ivanka can be paid as an employee and a contractor and no one has answered. Please educate me!

The situation is unusual, but I can certainly imagine instances where it is done. For example, if a person has a normal employee job with a company as an accountant, performing work as directed by the company, but also works as a contractor for recruitment - referring new hires by reading/understanding the job requirements but looking for matching candidates using their own methods and determining their own work schedule, in their own separate workspace.

There is nothing in law that specifically says that a person cannot be both an employee and a contractor when doing very different tasks. However, for doing the same set of work, a person is either an employee or a contractor, but not both. In this situation, we don't know what the nature of work is.

Right, but we do know Ivanka's areas of "expertise." She doesn't exactly have a diverse skill set, does she?

*shrug*, that sounds more like a snide remark than a real attempt at a meaningful response. You can make those remarks if you want to, but it just shows that you have nothing to answer against facts, reason, and logic, only your feelings. You may not like it that Ivanka is both an employee and a contractor, but that doesn't make it illegal. We are a nation of laws, not a nation of feelings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The IRS is not stupid. People like Trump and all other very rich people have relationships with the IRS in a way most of us don't. The IRS spends a lot of time on Trump's taxes. They have for decades. They don't merely accept the tax returns without questions. A loud mouthed public figure like Trump isn't going to have been able to hide tax fraud for the last 20 years.

Meanwhile, Trump pays whole teams of clever accountants and lawyers to do his taxes and the sad reality is that it's all quite legit.

It's just like the Meuller report where the method of investigation turned out to be legally more dubious than anything found on Trump himself.

All of this is false. The IRS doesn't have the bandwidth to comb through rich people's returns. Last year the IRS only audited 7% of people with incomes over $10 million.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/08/attention-taxpayers-irs-audits-have-fallen-significantly.html

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Trump lied in his financial disclosures.

"In 2018, for example, Mr. Trump announced in his disclosure that he had made at least $434.9 million. The tax records deliver a very different portrait of his bottom line: $47.4 million in losses."

Wonder if PP ever heard of EBIDTA?

EBITDA isn’t a part of tax accounting, it’s a way of representing financial results that backs out interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization that can skew net income numbers depending on the how much debt the company carries, what tax authorities they’re subject to, etc., so as to more accurately represent a company’s operating performance.

It also isn’t relevant to what the pp is talking about, because the disclosure statement reflects revenues, which isn’t the same as EBITDA, in that EBITDA deducts operating expenses from revenues.

Regardless, the numbers in the disclosure statements are not comparable to numbers filed in tax returns, which is the substantive point being made. The outrage is based on ignorance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I must admit I am amused that the Democrats spent years trying to prove Trump broke laws only for the FBI and Meuller investigations to break laws in their investigations of Trump. And someone broke laws in leaking the Trump taxes to the NYT only to show that Trump didn't break any tax laws either. You may not like the taxes or lack of taxes but he was in compliance of the US tax code. And someone at the DA office in NY definitely did something illegal in the leaking.

Shrugs. Yeah, it's still bad for Trump's persona but I'm more bothered by the hyperpartisan Democrats' willingness to break laws in trying to bring Trump down. I get that you don't like the guy but they've turned themselves into bitter caricatures in the process.

There are a number of things in there that aren’t in compliance with the tax code.

Such as...

By the way, you still don't have the documents. You have purported documents from an anonymous source, released at a time not for journalistic inquiry, but to hurt Trump's election. This is a fabricated hit job.

This would be incredibly easy for Trump and his campaign to refute. They could release his tax returns. But Trump just said he won't do that. They could send them on to a trusted buddy at the WSJ editorial board or somewhere who could write a response article refuting the NYT article. But they won't do that because... Do you know why?

Haha, why would he need to refute anything? It's perfectly clear from this thread that only the ignorant are angry about this. It's not Trump's job to teach people basic principles of business taxes and accounting, especially related to real estate investments.

If you are a seeker of truth, why not heed the advice of people who obviously know more about taxes and real estate investments than you. Why continue to wallow in your outrage, instead of taking a moment to educate yourself. I thought Democrats valued the advice of experts.

I've asked multiple times how Ivanka can be paid as an employee and a contractor and no one has answered. Please educate me!

The situation is unusual, but I can certainly imagine instances where it is done. For example, if a person has a normal employee job with a company as an accountant, performing work as directed by the company, but also works as a contractor for recruitment - referring new hires by reading/understanding the job requirements but looking for matching candidates using their own methods and determining their own work schedule, in their own separate workspace.

There is nothing in law that specifically says that a person cannot be both an employee and a contractor when doing very different tasks. However, for doing the same set of work, a person is either an employee or a contractor, but not both. In this situation, we don't know what the nature of work is.

Right, but we do know Ivanka's areas of "expertise." She doesn't exactly have a diverse skill set, does she?

*shrug*, that sounds more like a snide remark than a real attempt at a meaningful response. You can make those remarks if you want to, but it just shows that you have nothing to answer against facts, reason, and logic, only your feelings. You may not like it that Ivanka is both an employee and a contractor, but that doesn't make it illegal. We are a nation of laws, not a nation of feelings.

This is as illegal as Trump's "charity" the Trump Foundation. He had to pay a 2 million dollar fine for that. It is like the Ukrainian tapes. He thinks he is satisfying the letter of the law, but he doesn't even come close.

[Anonymous]

I thought one of the rumored reasons was that he was using interlocking shell companies to capture massive bankruptcy losses he got out of pesonally and then using those losses to offer any income for decades.

Depreciation and Ivanka payments shouldn't cover up all the profits. This is going to be the craziest fact pattern for a test!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Trump lied in his financial disclosures.

"In 2018, for example, Mr. Trump announced in his disclosure that he had made at least $434.9 million. The tax records deliver a very different portrait of his bottom line: $47.4 million in losses."

Wonder if PP ever heard of EBIDTA?

EBITDA isn’t a part of tax accounting, it’s a way of representing financial results that backs out interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization that can skew net income numbers depending on the how much debt the company carries, what tax authorities they’re subject to, etc., so as to more accurately represent a company’s operating performance.

It also isn’t relevant to what the pp is talking about, because the disclosure statement reflects revenues, which isn’t the same as EBITDA, in that EBITDA deducts operating expenses from revenues.

Regardless, the numbers in the disclosure statements are not comparable to numbers filed in tax returns, which is the substantive point being made. The outrage is based on ignorance.

Oh that's a relief. Because I thought this showed that our president is a dirty tax cheat. Good to find out that tax documents have nothing to do with disclosure documents.

[Anonymous]