Posted on 10/02/2020 11:34:55 AM PDT by knighthawk
The New York Times’ claim that President Donald Trump paid just $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017 is wrong, based on a flawed understanding of how taxes are paid.
The figures below, drawn from the New York Times’s own analysis of Trump’s tax-return data for 2017, show that Trump paid $7,435,857 in taxes in 2017.
The Times says the tax return data show that Trump’s earnings were negative for the year, so he owned nothing in regular income taxes. But he was subject to the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), a parallel tax system aimed at making sure wealthy people cannot use deductions to eliminate their tax liability altogether. According to the Times, “the A.M.T. formula disallowed $45 million in losses that Mr. Trump had carried over from prior years.”
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
So, the NYT just got caught telling big bald faced lies about President Trump again.
Does this surprise anyone?
The times failed as it always does. To inform the public, it should have:
- told us how much Trump paid in estimated quarterly taxes
- told us how much he paid through withholding
- how much income was ordinary income, dividends, interest, pension, capital gains.
- what the effective tax rate was for all that.
Actually, the times had no right to publish ANY of it.
I’m all for everybody paying as little or nothing in income taxes.
The less that government has to spend, the less government intrusion there will be into our lives.
Government has gotten super-big with spending for social programs, such as medicare and medicaid and food stamps and government assistance for housing and welfare and too many others, all of which allow government to intrude into our lives. Those didn’t exist when the country was founded, and they didn’t exist until 100 years ago.
In fact, the federal government should not be in the business of taxing income.
Yawn...all these stupid little things going around, taxes, condemning proud boys, covid, are all designed to keep the focus off the important stuff like confirming Barrett, the recovering economy, peace in the middle east.
L8r
Having $750 in taxes two years in a row was a clear red flag that they were misrepresenting what was going on. Actual taxes owed look like some random number rather than the same thing twice in a row. Even if you make exactly the same, changes in the tax brackets would change the amount owed.
I’m sure the msm will be right on this correction /s
No doubt. It would be just about impossible to have that same amount for two consecutive years, especially for a private business with operations all over the world. There's no way anyone with half a brain at the Times could look at that and say, "Oh, yeah, that's possible".
I’d still like to know who and how someone got ahold of Trump’s taxes in the first place.
I had wondered about the AMT. Many years the AMT screwed me, when I thought I owed less but when the CPA did the returns “sorry, AMT”.
No kidding. The AMT is a bitch. You work hard to build something and get your “payday.” But nope—you are officially a “rich bastard” and you have to pay your “fair share.”
Its obscene.
Another thing to consider - Trump’s personal income, vs Trump’s many LLC and the Trump Organization/property management companies.
I’d imagine that each Trump owned property is its own taxable legal entity - again back to my CPA he owns 4 or 5 apartment buildings, each of them is in their own LLC which provides him some security if he has to bankrupt one of them it doesn’t take down his entire portfolio.
Then there are the building firms, and the management firms that run the various properties. I do wonder how many different tax returns Trump organizations file. His personal return may only be one small facet of a ‘larger mosaic’ of tax matters.
The AMT, when initially implemented was meant to ensnare the very richest individuals, perhaps 6 people. With inflation and rising salaries, it now ensnares many thousands of middle-class citizens. I've been hit by the AMT and hate it, another way that the government steals money from us and gives it to things and people we dislike.
People who have worked in the tax field know about the Alternative Minimum Tax which appears on Form 1040 a few lines down form the line that shows the tax in the tax table. People who have “tax preference items”, like Trump.
The tax from the tax table might show a low amount, but the Alternative Minimum Tax could be huge. People like Chris Wallace and Joe Biden do not know squat, or they probably do know it and they are blowing smoke. I noticed that the fake news media stress that his income tax was about $750 but they do not say what his total income taxes paid were. His total income taxes paid would be the approximate amount of $750 PLUS the Alternative Minimum Tax.
“Trump’s personal income, vs Trump’s many LLC and the Trump Organization/property management companies.”
And all of this has been picked apart by the IRS tax lawyers. All of the taxes that Trump has been involved with have been reviewed by many professionals within the differing government organizations while Obama was president.
Of course the Obama IRS was digging, I have no doubt. If they were chasing down single moms with right leaning websites, they had to be chasing down Trump. Perhaps why he is still ‘under audit’. Rare is the billionaire who actually cheats on his/her taxes. Tax avoidance, taking advantage of the laws to your benefit is perfectly legal. Tax cheating of course not legal. People like this must pay a fortune on book keepers, comptrollers, accountants, tax lawyers and more. But I can think of a a few. Leona Helmsley comes to mind - which is sort of how Trump ended up owning The Plaza Hotel in NYC (formerly the Helmsley Plaza).
Bookmark
I heard a called on levin’s radio show a few days back, he estimated that trump has approx 22,000 employes and used an average salary to come up with about $110 million a year that trump companies pay in federal withholding taxes on their employees.
not to mention all the income taxes paid by the 22,000 employes.
contrast this contribution to the federal income with the biden gang or CF???
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