By declaring a staggering loss of $916 million in his tax returns back in 1995, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump could have legally avoided paying any federal income tax for up to 18 years, The New York Times reported on Sunday.
Tapping tax experts to analyse three pages from Trump’s undisclosed 1995 returns which it reportedly received by mail anonymously, the paper said the US tax rules would have allowed the billionaire businessman to use the huge loss to cancel out a like amount of taxable income over an 18-year period.
Trump’s extraordinary tax benefits flowed from the massive losses he accumulated “through mismanagement of three Atlantic City casinos, his ill-fated foray into the airline business and his ill-timed purchase of the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan”, The Times reported.
With the presidential election barely five weeks away, the revelations have come at a time when Trump has been under intense pressure from his opponent Hillary Clinton and media outlets to release the tax returns — something he has stubbornly resisted for many months on the ground that his returns are under audit by IRS (Internal Revenue Service).
The Trump campaign, without confirming or denying the authenticity of the published documents, attacked The Times as an extension of the Clinton campaign, saying: “The only news here is that the more than 20-year-old alleged tax document was illegally obtained.”
“Trump is a highly-skilled businessman who has a fiduciary responsibility to his business, his family and his employees to pay no more tax than legally required,” the campaign said defiantly, asserting that the nominee has paid “hundreds of millions of dollars in property taxes, sales and excise taxes, real estate taxes, city taxes, state taxes, employee taxes and federal taxes, along with very substantial charitable contributions”.
A lawyer for Trump emailed a letter to The Times, saying publication of the records is illegal since Trump has not authorised the disclosure of any of his tax returns and threatening “prompt initiation of appropriate legal action”.
The Clinton campaign called it a “bombshell report” that “reveals the colossal nature of Trump’s past business failures and just how long he may have avoided paying any federal income taxes whatsoever”. Clinton herself tweeted: “Trump apparently got to avoid paying taxes for nearly two decades — while tens of millions of working families paid theirs.”
“Now that the gig is up, why doesn’t he go ahead and release his returns to show us all how ‘smart’ he really isIJ” the Clinton campaign said, accusing Trump of cheating small businesses and laying off workers even as he got to avoid paying taxes for nearly two decades.
The three pages from Trump’s 1995 tax documents that The Times drew upon comprised the first pages of his New York State resident income tax return, New Jersey nonresident tax return and Connecticut nonresident tax return. They had been mailed last month to a reporter who has written about Trump’s finances, the paper said and quoted a certified public accountant who had handled Trump’s tax matters for more than 30 years as saying that the documents appeared to be authentic.
The revelations have come at a particularly inopportune moment for Trump, just days after having been beaten badly by Clinton in the first presidential debate that has helped her to gain ground in the latest polls. It has also been compounded by his outbursts against a former Miss Universe after Clinton thrust it on centre-stage at the debate and he fell for the bait.
The NYT story surfaced just as Trump delivered a speech in Pennsylvania during which he opened a new line of attack on Clinton, not only dealing with her public record but also her personal matters with husband Bill Clinton. “Hillary Clinton’s only loyalty is to her financial contributors and to herself. I don’t even think she’s loyal to Bill, if you want to know the truth,” he said, adding: “And really, folks, really, why should she be, rightIJ”