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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For everyone saying this is all totally legal and normal (which is far from evidence and you know it), there is still a big problem here, which is that teachers and nurses and construction workers shouldn’t be paying ten times more in races every year than a purported billionaire. If Trump really cared about the American people, his tax law would have been focused on closing loopholes and easing the burden on middle income Americans who are struggling to make ends meet, rather than further enriching himself at their expense.

Cheer for him all you want, but don’t fool yourself for a minute that he cares about you. He thinks of you all as useful idiots, nothing more.

+1
The "accountants" on this thread are either too in the weeds to see the big picture, or are desperate Trump supporters.

Don't democrats value the opinion of experts? Imagine if someone said that climate scientists are too in the weeds to see the big picture, or are desperate Democratic supporters.

It would be weird if people were getting their information on climate science from anonymous posters on DCUM.

I don't think the PP's point was complaining about the anonymity of DCUM.

Oh that was definitely a big part of what I was saying. That's why I put "accountants" in quotes. Plenty of DCUMers like to your their credentials, but most readers are smart enough to take that with a grain of salt.

[Anonymous]

Remember way back when Mitt Romney was caught on tape condemning the moochers of America, the 47% of Americans who pay no income taxes?


Turns out he was talking about Trump

[Anonymous]

I could care less about Trump's taxes as an individual. But I love what he has done for us.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As an accountant I am not surprised by this number at all. He has lost a lot of money on a lot of businesses. Without more detail, the $750 has very little meaning. It's just being dropped to get people outraged

You are so wise, and yet: 1) the number does have meaning on its very face about how much he paid and 2) read the article for lots and lots more detail.

Also, it's the frequency with which this has happened. One year = not concerning at all. Two years = not a big deal. But 10-15 years in a row!

Spanning multiple administrations and others before that. REIT-real estate investment trusts and the impact of depreciation - is one factor
https://www.realtymogul.com/knowledge-center/article/depreciation-taxes-reit-and-private-placement-investments#:~:text=How%20Shareholders%20of%20REITs%20are%20Taxed&text=In%20some%20cases%2C%20part%20or,capital%2C%20is%20non%2Dtaxable.

Then there is EBITDA =Earnings Before Net Income + Interest + Taxes + Depreciation + Amortization Look at debt to equity ratios. So whether an REIT or an LLc the partners, principals, promoters could have had AGI for 2018 that generated the 1200 or 2400 stimulus payments.

Other stuff- HHS audits on dispersed federal funds include NYC pre covid and childcare subsidies. https://oig.hhs.gov/oas/reports/region2/21702010.pdf
And the wealthy getting free medicare part A for spouses sans 40 quarters.

Perhaps unemployment could result in E verify? Reducing h 1b?

All above are unintended pandemic bonus' for US citizens in all of this?

[Anonymous]

And to compare the "CPA" and "accountant" posts on here with decades of consensus on climate science is laughable in so many ways.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For everyone saying this is all totally legal and normal (which is far from evidence and you know it), there is still a big problem here, which is that teachers and nurses and construction workers shouldn’t be paying ten times more in races every year than a purported billionaire. If Trump really cared about the American people, his tax law would have been focused on closing loopholes and easing the burden on middle income Americans who are struggling to make ends meet, rather than further enriching himself at their expense.

Cheer for him all you want, but don’t fool yourself for a minute that he cares about you. He thinks of you all as useful idiots, nothing more.

+1
The "accountants" on this thread are either too in the weeds to see the big picture, or are desperate Trump supporters.

Don't democrats value the opinion of experts? Imagine if someone said that climate scientists are too in the weeds to see the big picture, or are desperate Democratic supporters.

Sorry, are you saying Trump doesn't pay a tiny fraction in income taxes of what teachers, nurses and construction workers pay? Please give me your expert opinion. I'm just a lay person so I don't know if I can understand this fundamental point.

If you admit to being ignorant, then perhaps be a little more modest and less accusatory towards people who know more than you on the subject matter. No one is saying everything that Trump has done with regards to taxes is perfectly fine - just that we don't have enough information to conclude one way or another. It is common and normal for wealthy people, especially those in real estate investments, to use depreciation and other mechanisms to lower/manage their present tax payments. This does *NOT* absolve them from the need to pay taxes on gains, just delay them to future years. The mere fact that Trump paid little to no taxes in two years says *NOTHING* about how much taxes he will eventually have to pay on those gains. This is like a climate change denier pointing to two cold winters and saying "aha! see! there is no global warming!"

The tax will be due, sooner or later. Trump can only delay it. The only escape is death, but that's another topic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So Trump is like 75,000,000 other Americans who pay no income taxes.



As a CPA I can professionally tell everyone here that >99% of DCUMers have absolutely no idea how business or high wealth taxes work, yet will jump to whatever conclusions they see fit.

Look at amazon as an example. Every letter to shareholders they advocate for “maximizing the present value of future cash flows” (if you don’t know what that means you have no hope of understanding Trump's tax returns).

Ultimately it is a strategy to reinvest cash flows into future earning potential to avoid paying income taxes. Amazon as a company had negative net income but was still worth hundreds of billions of dollars due to generating massive future free cash flow.

At some level, if you have positive net income as a business, you don’t know what to do with your money and are happy to waste some on tax. That sums up trumps tax returns - he doesn’t want to waste any money paying taxes.

Reading New York Times attempt to analyze trumps tax returns is like reading a toddler try to interpret Benjamin Graham. NYT's hack job is pure cringe worthy. They aren’t even consistent on how they talk about depreciation and never even mention what free cash flow even is.

To all the democrats out there - this ain’t it chief. Of course this will never get brought to light with a free and fair counter argument published in the NYT, because discussing gritty aspects of the US tax code is a snooze fest. Gotta sell the hyperbole and outrageous headlines.

Except that the market or rather the enterprise value of his properties is currently underwater. Also, the article makes clear that he's been cashing out his actual equity in stocks as well as his money making operations for years. This is no Benjamin Graham-style value investing business that generates huge amounts of FCF. It's a money losing operation. And hey, if was so profitable, then why aren't other value investors or growth investors going to same well? That is, why isn't there a feeding frenzy among private equity funds buying up golf clubs and leveraging them up because they're so profitable? And if so, then wouldn't you see record prices being paid for flipping the properties as golf clubs. This doesn't add up - and that's before the pandemic decimated the cash flows of the hotel industry.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For everyone saying this is all totally legal and normal (which is far from evidence and you know it), there is still a big problem here, which is that teachers and nurses and construction workers shouldn’t be paying ten times more in races every year than a purported billionaire. If Trump really cared about the American people, his tax law would have been focused on closing loopholes and easing the burden on middle income Americans who are struggling to make ends meet, rather than further enriching himself at their expense.

Cheer for him all you want, but don’t fool yourself for a minute that he cares about you. He thinks of you all as useful idiots, nothing more.

+1
The "accountants" on this thread are either too in the weeds to see the big picture, or are desperate Trump supporters.

Don't democrats value the opinion of experts? Imagine if someone said that climate scientists are too in the weeds to see the big picture, or are desperate Democratic supporters.

Sorry, are you saying Trump doesn't pay a tiny fraction in income taxes of what teachers, nurses and construction workers pay? Please give me your expert opinion. I'm just a lay person so I don't know if I can understand this fundamental point.

There seem to be a lot of “CPAs” and “accountants” posting today who can’t seem to explain why Trump’s understatement of income to avoid federal tax obligations and simultaneous overstatement of income on loan paperwork to seek credit lines doesn’t constitute fraud.

Yep. Give us your name and your license number and we’ll believe you. If not, you’re as much of a CPA as I am an NBA basketball player

[Anonymous]

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For everyone saying this is all totally legal and normal (which is far from evidence and you know it), there is still a big problem here, which is that teachers and nurses and construction workers shouldn’t be paying ten times more in races every year than a purported billionaire. If Trump really cared about the American people, his tax law would have been focused on closing loopholes and easing the burden on middle income Americans who are struggling to make ends meet, rather than further enriching himself at their expense.

Cheer for him all you want, but don’t fool yourself for a minute that he cares about you. He thinks of you all as useful idiots, nothing more.

+1
The "accountants" on this thread are either too in the weeds to see the big picture, or are desperate Trump supporters.

Don't democrats value the opinion of experts? Imagine if someone said that climate scientists are too in the weeds to see the big picture, or are desperate Democratic supporters.

It would be weird if people were getting their information on climate science from anonymous posters on DCUM.

I don't think the PP's point was complaining about the anonymity of DCUM.

Oh that was definitely a big part of what I was saying. That's why I put "accountants" in quotes. Plenty of DCUMers like to your their credentials, but most readers are smart enough to take that with a grain of salt.

Think what you will, I don't speak for others but I myself am not here to look for your approval or acknowledgement. I'll share what I know and hope it help others come to a more informed opinion. You may choose to ignore facts and logic if you want to, it doesn't bother me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I could care less about Trump's taxes as an individual. But I love what he has done for us.

What concrete things has he done for us?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So Trump is like 75,000,000 other Americans who pay no income taxes.



As a CPA I can professionally tell everyone here that >99% of DCUMers have absolutely no idea how business or high wealth taxes work, yet will jump to whatever conclusions they see fit.

Look at amazon as an example. Every letter to shareholders they advocate for “maximizing the present value of future cash flows” (if you don’t know what that means you have no hope of understanding Trump's tax returns).

Ultimately it is a strategy to reinvest cash flows into future earning potential to avoid paying income taxes. Amazon as a company had negative net income but was still worth hundreds of billions of dollars due to generating massive future free cash flow.

At some level, if you have positive net income as a business, you don’t know what to do with your money and are happy to waste some on tax. That sums up trumps tax returns - he doesn’t want to waste any money paying taxes.

Reading New York Times attempt to analyze trumps tax returns is like reading a toddler try to interpret Benjamin Graham. NYT's hack job is pure cringe worthy. They aren’t even consistent on how they talk about depreciation and never even mention what free cash flow even is.

To all the democrats out there - this ain’t it chief. Of course this will never get brought to light with a free and fair counter argument published in the NYT, because discussing gritty aspects of the US tax code is a snooze fest. Gotta sell the hyperbole and outrageous headlines.

Except that the market or rather the enterprise value of his properties is currently underwater. Also, the article makes clear that he's been cashing out his actual equity in stocks as well as his money making operations for years. This is no Benjamin Graham-style value investing business that generates huge amounts of FCF. It's a money losing operation. And hey, if was so profitable, then why aren't other value investors or growth investors going to same well? That is, why isn't there a feeding frenzy among private equity funds buying up golf clubs and leveraging them up because they're so profitable? And if so, then wouldn't you see record prices being paid for flipping the properties as golf clubs. This doesn't add up - and that's before the pandemic decimated the cash flows of the hotel industry.

And yes, there is a huge difference between what is allowed under GAAP and tax accounting. If his businesses were so profitable, then why aren't they paying down debt, instead of doing bullet maturity, interest only loans? Why does Trump have to personally guarantee the debt? Why will almost no other lender touch him? I think you know the answer. If this was a money making operation, lenders would be tripping over themselves to finance the business or at least underwrite the loan and sell it off to a CMBS securitization. Once you get into the hundreds of millions of dollars of debt, it usually becomes cheaper to do a bond offering or the like rather than one or more private loans that are personally guaranteed. That last bit - the personal guarantee - undermines his hundreds of LLCs. It's recourse to him personally which is why he's totally screwed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For everyone saying this is all totally legal and normal (which is far from evidence and you know it), there is still a big problem here, which is that teachers and nurses and construction workers shouldn’t be paying ten times more in races every year than a purported billionaire. If Trump really cared about the American people, his tax law would have been focused on closing loopholes and easing the burden on middle income Americans who are struggling to make ends meet, rather than further enriching himself at their expense.

Cheer for him all you want, but don’t fool yourself for a minute that he cares about you. He thinks of you all as useful idiots, nothing more.

+1
The "accountants" on this thread are either too in the weeds to see the big picture, or are desperate Trump supporters.

Don't democrats value the opinion of experts? Imagine if someone said that climate scientists are too in the weeds to see the big picture, or are desperate Democratic supporters.

It would be weird if people were getting their information on climate science from anonymous posters on DCUM.

I don't think the PP's point was complaining about the anonymity of DCUM.

Oh that was definitely a big part of what I was saying. That's why I put "accountants" in quotes. Plenty of DCUMers like to your their credentials, but most readers are smart enough to take that with a grain of salt.

Think what you will, I don't speak for others but I myself am not here to look for your approval or acknowledgement. I'll share what I know and hope it help others come to a more informed opinion. You may choose to ignore facts and logic if you want to, it doesn't bother me.

You aren't posting facts and logic, you are posting opinion and your credentials are meaningless when you are anonymous.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I could care less about Trump's taxes as an individual. But I love what he has done for us.

What concrete things has he done for us?

Owned the libs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I could care less about Trump's taxes as an individual. But I love what he has done for us.

What concrete things has he done for us?

Owned the libs.

He's not rich enough to own the libs.