Here's the Bottom Line -- NYT Bombshell Essentially Boils Down to This: Trump Paid Millions in Taxes, Owes No Debt to Russia

PJ Media ^ | 09/28/2020 | Stephen Green

[SeekAndFind]

“Trump Paid Millions in Taxes” isn’t nearly as scandalous a headline as “Trump Paid Only $750 in Taxes,” although, to be fair, it does have the advantage of being true.

Alexandria Brown dug deep into the New York Times‘ story to see if there was any truth to the shrieking headlines:

As Brown further noted, “Trump PAID, as in transferred to the US Treasury, $1 million in 2016 and $4.2 million in 2017. Note also that most of the overpayment was rolled forward, not refunded.”

People who own and run businesses take losses in some years, and pay little or nothing in taxes, and make great sums in other years and pay much more in taxes.

They also take advantage of tax breaks, tax credits, and tax incentives — just like you and I do.

Here’s a screencap from the actual NYT report:

Treasury was millions of dollars richer in 2016 and 2017, thanks to checks signed “Donald J. Trump.” But thanks to our overly complicated tax code, the line-item amount Trump technically paid for those years was $750.

Fact Check: Are you kidding us with this nonsense, NYT?

In reality, Trump has paid enough in taxes just this century to buy more than one $85 million F-35A Lightning II stealth strike jet.

I haven’t paid enough in taxes my entire working life to buy a single one of $2 million helmets F-35 pilots wear.

Feeling like a bit of a slacker here on that score.

So, the bottom line on this NYT 'blockbuster' story on Trump's taxes is that:
– There's zero indication of illegal activity
– There's zero information on Trump's net worth
–

[SeekAndFind]

The NYT report also Confirms Trump’s previous statements of not paying taxes some years due to legal tax avoidance techniques.

The real scandal here — aside from how awful and corrupt our tax laws are — is that someone in the federal government, presumably in the IRS, broke the law by leaking confidential tax returns.

I would remind you that while president, Barack Obama weaponized the IRS against conservative Tea Party groups.

You should also remember that this isn’t the first time the New York Times has run a tax-related hit-piece on Trump in the weeks before a presidential election. The New York Times ran a hit piece on Trump right before the 2016 election, which attempted to re-frame legal, often used provisions to reduce tax liability as some sort of nefarious activity.

It didn’t work then and it won’t work now.

[PGR88]

I simply can’t imagine what these fools were hoping to find.

Do they think anyone who engage in illegal activities actually reports on them on their income taxes???

[SunkenCiv]

[SmokingJoe]

So another hoax from The Slimes.
They’d better but in for another Pulitzer Prize. After all their last Pulitzer was for the Russian collusion hoax which was totally made up.

[preacher]

l8r

[Bernard]

Before I retired, I was paid by clients to prepare a few thousand income tax returns over the years, and there are a few things I learned during that time.

One of them is that if I want the headlines on somebody's income tax returns, I don't rely on journalism majors to work through the details.

[SeekAndFind]

FROM MATT VESPA AT TOWNHALL :

It’s nothing we haven’t read before the paper did similar stories in 2016 and 2018, which no one read or cared about. Tax avoidance is not illegal, clowns. Thanks for playing and in the process—the Times actually helped Trump by exposing another aspect of the Russian collusion myth, which is that he did not have an unreported connection to Russia. I mean, it’s there in black and white, which liberal reporter Michael Tracey pointed out (via NYT) [emphasis mine]:

The New York Times has obtained tax-return data extending over more than two decades for Mr. Trump and the hundreds of companies that make up his business organization, including detailed information from his first two years in office. It does not include his personal returns for 2018 or 2019. This article offers an overview of The Times’s findings; additional articles will be published in the coming weeks.

The returns are some of the most sought-after, and speculated-about, records in recent memory. In Mr. Trump’s nearly four years in office — and across his endlessly hyped decades in the public eye — journalists, prosecutors, opposition politicians and conspiracists have, with limited success, sought to excavate the enigmas of his finances. By their very nature, the filings will leave many questions unanswered, many questioners unfulfilled. They comprise information that Mr. Trump has disclosed to the I.R.S., not the findings of an independent financial examination. They report that Mr. Trump owns hundreds of millions of dollars in valuable assets, but they do not reveal his true wealth. Nor do they reveal any previously unreported connections to Russia.

The big reveal, if you can call it that, is that President Trump only paid $750 in income taxes back in 2016. That’s it. I think Brett Kavanaugh throwing ice at a bar might be more of a ‘bombshell’ and that’s not saying much. 

2 Reporters on this latest NY Times tax story essentially wrote the same story as well in 2018https://t.co/P0T2yszu9q pic.twitter.com/oH8yKxH5RD— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) September 28, 2020

November 1st, 2016https://t.co/YhFsRG3eli— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) September 28, 2020

This must've been a real heart-breaker for the NYT pic.twitter.com/VohduSuBwe— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) September 27, 2020

I think we can rest assured that if there were even the vaguest *hint* of a Russian "connection" in the tax records the NYT obtained, their headlines would be blaring about it five-alarm-fire style. Opposite finding, however, and it's consigned to a throwaway footnote— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) September 27, 2020

For years it was an article of faith among conspiracists that Trump withheld taxes in order to conceal sinister financial dealings with Russia. That's now debunked per NYT. But don't expect any acknowledgment: the conspiracies were always faith-based and therefore unfalsifiable— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) September 27, 2020

[Sacajaweau]

And for years, NYS made some big bucks in taxes from all the buildings he built and ran.

[Paco]

It’s really ironic that the libs are up in arms about this article and the taxes he paid or didn’t pay and yet, it’s the dimwits they vote for who structured and passed tax legislation. Up until 2017 Trump was a private citizen...he didn’t write the tax code, he simply abides by it.

[4integrity]

‘...Up until 2017 Trump was a private citizen...he didn’t write the tax code, he simply abides by it.’

Excellent point!!

[Mister Da]

I knew 4 years ago Trump’s taxes were clean. Obama’s partisan IRS would have found something if it was there, yet they never found anything. I doubt Biden could withstand such scrutiny.

[NCSUgirl4ever]

Thank you, thank you for posting this here! I used this and other information to answer 2 Facebook postings.