Congratulations! If you’ve paid any income taxes over the last decade, you’ve officially paid more in taxes than President Donald Trump did in 10 of the last 15 years!
Yes, you read that right.
On Sunday, The New York Times released an analysis of more than two decades’ worth of the president’s long-sought-after tax returns. The analysis revealed that the self-described billionaire paid zero dollars in income taxes in 10 of the last 15 years.
Trump actually received money from the system he didn’t pay into. In 2010, he received an Internal Revenue Service refund of $72.9 million, which makes up the entirety of the federal income tax he surprisingly paid between 2005 and 2008, with interest. This specific refund has been the center of an IRS audit for a decade.
Trump finally ponied up some cash, though, as he paid a whopping $750 in income tax in 2016. The following year, he paid another $750.
The New York Times’ analysis also included some lovely tidbits about how Trump deducted anything and everything to avoid paying his fair share of taxes. He deducted the fuel and meal expenses associated with the private jets he flew from property to property — you know, normal business expenses — as well the cost of table linens, photographers for his Mar-a-Lago parties and so much more.
The prize for best tax deduction, however, has to go to the $70,000 worth of haircuts Trump claimed as a business expense while he was on “The Apprentice.”
Along with the deductions he claimed, Trump’s tax returns also reveal how he funneled money to his children. Trump claimed “some $26 million in unexplained ‘consulting fees’ as a business expense across nearly all of his projects.” Some of these fees appear to match payments received by the president’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, according to The New York Times.
While hiring a family member isn’t typically inappropriate, at the time, Ivanka worked for both her father’s enterprise — the company that paid for the consulting — and the consulting company, which she co-owned, that got paid for the consulting.
“She appears to have been treated as a consultant on the same hotel deals that she helped manage as part of her job at her father’s business,” according to The New York Times.
This double-dipping was one of the ways Trump avoided payroll taxes. He also possibly did this to escape gift taxes he would have been required to pay had he given his daughter the money outright.
These revelations on Trump’s tax avoidance are unquestionably appalling, and many outlets are calling the report a total bombshell — except it really isn’t a bombshell at all.
First came the Robert Mueller investigation and subsequent report. The pundit class swore up and down that this would be the bombshell to rock the nation and take Trump down. Surprise, surprise — it didn’t.
Then, Trump’s marital impropriety and potential campaign finance law violations were the bombshells that were going to turn Trump’s evangelical base against him. Surprise, surprise — they didn’t.
Then it was Trump’s intimidation and alleged attempted bribery of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky; then the impeachment trial; then Bob Woodward’s tapes exposing Trump’s lies about the coronavirus.
After all these so-called bombshells, I must ask: in a presidency chalk full of outrageous and borderline illegal activity, is a rich man avoiding his taxes really all that surprising?
If allegedly cheating on his wife who had just given birth to their son, cavorting with Russian oligarchs, attempting to bribe foreign leaders and lying about a deadly virus that has now claimed more than 200,000 American lives hasn’t rocked his approval ratings, I don’t think an exposé of Trump’s tax-evading ways is going to be the bombshell that takes him down.
Unfortunately, this president has the uncanny ability to shrug off bad press. He just calls it “fake news” and moves on to destroy our democracy one day at a time.
I guess “when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything!” Right, Donny?
If you’re going to take away anything from this latest Trump scandal, take this: the United States of America has a completely broken tax system.
A myriad of deduction rules, loopholes and more allow for the ultra-wealthy in this country to effectively pay a lower tax rate than middle-class Americans.
Thanks to Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, America’s 400 richest families — including the likes of the Zuckerbergs, Kochs, Waltons and more — now pay a tax rate of 23 percent while the bottom half of households pay more, at a rate of just above 24 percent, according to a book by economists at the University of California at Berkeley.
The effective tax rates on America’s richest have continually declined since the 1950s, when it reached its highest of 72 percent, according to data published by the economists.
Unsurprisingly, this slashing of taxes on the wealthiest among us hasn’t “trickled down,” as former President Ronald Reagan famously decreed — it has instead widened the wealth gap and increased inequality.
No, Trump isn’t the first, and certainly not the last, wealthy elite to use every trick in the book to avoid paying his already diminutive share of taxes. And no, this bombshell release of his taxes isn’t going to be the thing that takes him down.
But, it is the kind of information we need to know going into the polling booth on Nov. 3 or while filling in our absentee ballots. Just because tax avoidance by the mega-rich has been done for decades, that doesn’t mean we have to let them get away with it.
