Because people care 2 years into his first term about whether he REALLY made or lost money in the 80s.
The only people that will care are already voting against him.
And trying to explain tax shelters, non-cash losses, etc., would take an eternity for these nitwits.
The NY Times! The company that bought the Boston Globe for 1.1 billion dollars and later sold it for 70 million. Any chance they took advantage of any legal write offs ?
I used to do taxes professionally. However, I never was good enough to do any real business returns. Small sole proprietorships, yes. Real business returns, no. I’ve argued for some time that Trump’s tax returns would be too complex, involving too many rarely used but LEGAL parts of the tax law, for most PROFESSIONALS to understand.
I doubt more than 2 people in Congress, at best, could understand his returns. Not 1 in 10,000 average folks.
A few years ago, it was revealed that General Electric’s corporate return totaled some 67,000 pages, and in the end, the company didn’t pay a dime in federal taxes. Achieving that takes some very good accounting—and showing lots of “losses” in various business activities. Of course, GE was still making billions in profit, but if you know how to use the tax code to your advantage, you can offset those profits with various deductions and write-offs.
On a related note, I was listening to El Rushbo yesterday. He has had a partnership with Clear Channel (now iHeart media) for years. They manage his digital properties, and he has long had a contract with Jacor, the syndication arm that Clear Channel bought out years ago. Rush said there were “two or three” IRS employees permanently assigned to iHeart’s corporate headquarters to “assist” the company with its takes, and claimed the practice is standard.
I’d never heard of that arrangement before (and will defer to those more informed than I am), but it would make sense for the IRS to have dedicated liaisons with large corporations. In the case of iHeart, it might be related to the billions in debt racked up by taking the company private, and potential efforts to write off some of that debt.
If Trump was able to write off a billion in business losses and lower this tax bill, more power to him. Or would you prefer someone like Crazy Uncle Joe, who set up his son for a $1.5 billion deal with the government of China, and protected him from potential investigation by Ukrainian prosecutors?