[monkeyshine]

In order for Trump to have $950 million to lose, wouldn't he have had to earned somewhere between $1.2 billion to $1.8 billion over the previous years, paying taxes on those earnings? How else can you get $950 million and "pay no taxes"? It seems impossible to me. It seems to me that the government allows the carry forward deduction on losses because that lost money has already been taxed! To encourage investment of after tax earnings, the government allows you to write off losses and carry them forward. But it's not like he paid no taxes. He had to have already paid a lot of taxes in order to have $950 million after-tax to lose. I am not a CPA/Tax Lawyer so if there is some way to earn $950 million without having to pay any taxes on it please let me know.

And as you point out under Hillary's watch the State Department "lost" $6 billion it cannot account for! This is a great counter-attack and I hope Trump takes this up either in the debates or in ads or both. She lost $6 billion of your money, and now she asking for $1 trillion more! Nuts!

[justlurking]

If you borrow money, you can lose money before you earn it.

An example: you borrow $100,000 to invest in something. The investment goes sour, and you lose all of it. You have a net loss that year, but you still have to pay back the $100,000 loan.

However, the truth is that carrying forward a loss simply allows you to offset future gains. For example, you buy a stock for $10,000 and sell it for $5,000. That's a $5,000 loss. If you have other capital gains in the same year, that $5,000 is subtracted from those.

On your individual return, you can offset $3,000 of ordinary income (wages, dividends, etc.) per year with a capital loss. So, our hypothetical $5,000 loss would be divided into a $3,000 adjustment to income, and a $2,000 carry forward into the next year.

The next year, the $2,000 can be used to offset a capital gain, or ordinary income.

If you held investments in a non-qualified account (i.e. not an IRA or 401(k)), you probably had significant losses in 2007 and/or 2008. Those losses would have carried forward into 2009 and later, offsetting future capital gains.