Report: Trumps 2005 Taxes Revealed

[brooklynite]

Source: The Daily Beast

Donald Trump earned more than $150 million in the year 2005—and paid just a small percentage of that in regular federal income taxes. Daily Beast contributor David Cay Johnston has obtained what appear to be the first two pages of Trump’s 2005 federal income tax return, and published an analysis of those pages on his website, DCReport.org. The Daily Beast could not independently verify these documents.

The documents show Trump and his wife Melania paying $5.3 million in regular federal income tax—a rate of less than 4% However, the Trumps paid an additional $31 million in the so-called “alternative minimum tax,” or AMT. Trump has previously called for the elimination of this tax.

“Before being elected President, Mr. Trump was one of the most successful businessmen in the world with a responsibility to his company, his family and his employees to pay no more tax than legally required,” the White House said in a statement. “That being said, Mr. Trump paid $38 million dollars even after taking into account large scale depreciation for construction, on an income of more than $150 million dollars, as well as paying tens of millions of dollars in other taxes such as sales and excise taxes and employment taxes and this illegally published return proves just that.”

Trump’s 2005 return also shows that he’d continued to benefit from the roughly $916 million loss he reported in his 1995 return—published last year by The New York Times. Using a loophole Congress closed in 1996, Trump converted that loss into a tax credit for the same amount he could offset against income.

Read more: http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2017/03/14/report-trump-s-2005-taxes-revealed.html?via=desktop&source=copyurl

[msanthrope]

1. Drip, drip, drip. nt

[NightWatcher]

2. So how's this a huge story? What damage does this do?

[still_one]

3. Exactly

[fmdaddio]

5. It's not

This will backfire "Bigly" I'm afraid. This will make the media look bad to boot. What is Racheal trying to do discredit the tax return issue for good? Just Great!! I hope I'm wrong about this.

[calimary]

34. Welcome to DU, fmdaddio!

You know that old cliche. Something that seems too good to be true probably is.

[George II]

6. No damage. This is useless, other than showing that tax returns can be had.

[TimeToGo]

7. Afraid you are correct.

I'm beside myself -- it seems she was being played. When she spent 20 minutes telling us why it's important to look at taxes (duh), I knew we had nothing.

[George II]

28. I KNEW she was going to do that 3-4 minutes into it - I was screaming at the television........

......."JUST SHOW IT TO US!!!" In those three or four minutes she must have mentioned Watergate and Nixon a dozen times.

I couldn't take her melodrama and those frowny eyes all the time waiting for her to get to the point. Finally about six minutes into it I switched over to "The Big Bang Theory"!

I stopped watching her about five years ago because I couldn't take all the fake melodrama and faces, and drawing circles on her freaking notes, etc. TOO phony for me.

[hibbing]

8. It will probably help him

His supporters will see the millions he did pay in taxes and think he's overtaxed.


Peace

[Agschmid]

26. None.

And I believe it's likely Trump released these himself.

[ThingsGottaChange]

4. 12 years ago?!?!?

WTF good is it now?

[Rollo]

10. It showed the Trumps paid only 4% in regular tax, but...

$38 million in "Alternative Minimum Tax".

I'm wondering when Trump will deconstruct the IRS to change that to "Alternative Reality Tax", which instead of charging the Trumps $38 million, will gift to them $38 million in refundable tax credit.

Oh yeah. Alternative Reality Tax.

You heard it here first!

[elmac]

11. tRumps playing them like a cheap piano nt

[Yonnie3]

12. Not much new to learn.

We already knew about the 1995 loss being carried forward from the NY Times. What I was hoping for was the attached schedules. With them we might have found out about who (and where) he owes money and any financial involvement he has with foreign entities.

[Lanius]

16. Who (and where) he owes money and financial involvement with foreign entities is what's important

Although it's nice to see he paid less than 4% in regular federal income tax and $31 million in alternative minimum tax. And his desire to eliminate the AMT would mean he and those like him would get off with paying a much lower tax rate than most of us, even without his 1995 loss.

[Yonnie3]

22. I wish I was wealthy enough for the AMT to be a bother.

The way Trump's business is structured with a lot of separate LLCs that do business with a lot of other companies might mean the attachments to his 1040 form wouldn't directly show what we want to know. It would take a lot of detective work to find the dirt. I suspect that the reasons he doesn't want the tax information out there are (in no specific order):

He's not quite so rich
Large offshore income and/or debt
Lack of any charitable giving
He has been able to pay no (or small amounts of) taxes in many years.

[Lanius]

24. I think you're right on all of those points for why he won't release his returns.

[George II]

29. That's what I wanted - Schedules A and B primarily (i.e., sources of income and deductions).....

...without them the damned 1040 is useless.

[Kolesar]

13. Nice to hear from David Cay Johnston on The Rachel Maddow Show

At least the skepticism thrives.

[Crash2Parties]

14. We already know that as of last year he was 500+ million in debt...

(republican math foo)

He's a Billionaire!!! A 10x Billionaire!!!

[Midnight Writer]

15. Weird that Wikileaks can get Top Secret CIA files and can't hack Trump's taxes

[More_Cowbell]

18. Especially since the IRS's computer system is ancient

http://money.cnn.com/2015/02/03/pf/taxes/irs-budget-cuts/

[jmowreader]

17. I don't really care about his 2005 returns

He was still making money in real estate in 2005. Let's look at 2012 or 2013.

Trump has a BIG problem with early-teens returns: at that time, his income came from two primary sources: his work as an ersatz television star, and licensing his name.

[brooklynite]

19. Why would either of those be instructive?

Those were strictly marketing deals. Nothing likely to be untoward.

[HoneyBadger]

30. Because of his income went down from $150M to zero

He would be more susceptible.

[jmowreader]

36. It shows the true nature of the man

Trump portrays himself as the World's Greatest Real Estate Expert. Problem is, for many years he hasn't done a hell of a lot with real estate - mainly marketing. Which makes more sense than his being a "real estate expert" but he doesn't like facing reality.

[andym]

20. News leak designed to take the news focus off of the health care bill. nt.

[brooklynite]

21. Because the media only covers one story at a time?

[andym]

23. The media cover many stories of course. But there's only so much oxygen for the talking heads.

and editors. Trump's been playing them like a fiddle. The story about Obama's wiretapping almost completely wiped the stories from the "front page" and news talk shows about Sessions lying to Congress for example.

[brooklynite]

25. That's why Trump has been doing so well in the past month?

[andym]

31. Yes. That's why his gallop polling recovered until the health care bill was released and analyzed

http://www.gallup.com/poll/201617/gallup-daily-trump-job-approval.aspx
His approval was in the mid 40's% this month until the last two days-- way higher than it should be.
He was at 45 approve/49 disapprove on 3/11-- way too good considering what he has been saying and doing, one would think. He was doing far better than he deserved to be, by playing games with the press.

As soon as the health care bill really hit the public's consciousness-- boom! 39/55 and dropping like a rock.

[iluvtennis]

32. ITA. Like he leaked the pics of Melania, he conveniently leaked rtn after the $1B write off expired

[INdemo]

27. I think this was a set up to give the

White House a talking point for the Trump deplorables that this was just another act of interference by the Democrats.
First of all with that much earned income and expenses there would have to have included a schedule 'E,Schedule A and profit loss statement.
This was bait put out there by the White House and the producers of MSNBC fell for it,
Nothing to show except a bunch of numbers of supposedly income and taxes paid.
NBC would be wise not to ask about this at press briefing tomorrow becasue this is exactly what Spicer wants.

[TexasTowelie]

33. Remember that in 2006 he took a $100M write-off on Trump State Park

which is not shown on this tax return.

[inwiththenew]

35. I bet Trump had this "leaked"

To take the wind out of the sails of some of his critics.