Takeaways from the release of the long-awaited comeback

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In one of its last acts under Democratic control, the House of Representatives on Friday released six years of former President Donald Trump’s tax returns, dating back to 2015, the year he announced his presidential bid .

The thousands of pages of financial documents became the subject of a protracted legal battle after Trump broke precedent by not releasing his tax returns while running for, and then occupying, the highest office in the land.

Some takeaways from the review of the documents:

Bank account in China

The longtime real estate and media mogul with business interests on multiple continents was asked in a 2020 presidential debate about having a bank account in China. He said he shut it down before he started his campaign in 2016, a claim his tax returns show is false.

The bank account was in 2013. It was closed in 2015, I believe, Trump said in the debate. I thought about making a deal with China. Like millions of other people, I think about it. I decided not to do it.

The tax return, however, reported that Trump had a bank account in China in 2015, 2016 and 2017.

The returns show accounts in other foreign countries in recent years, including the United Kingdom, southern Ireland and the Caribbean island nation of St. Martin. In 2018, Trump appears to have closed all of his overseas accounts except for one in the UK, which is home to one of his flagship golf properties.

The returns do not detail the amount of money held in those accounts.

There is a lot of foreign investment

China is one of the few countries where Trump has reportedly made money in recent years.

He reported $38 million in gross overseas earnings in 2016 and $55 million in 2017, from countries including Azerbaijan, India, Indonesia, Panama, the Philippines, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.

This kind of information about potential conflicts of interest for the commander-in-chief of the United States is one reason why presidents routinely release their tax returns.

It is not clear where the foreign money came from. Trump has claimed tens of millions of dollars in losses and expenses on his investments abroad, but his liabilities there are sometimes greater than those in the US. In 2016, for example, Trump told the Internal Revenue Service that he paid $1.2 million in foreign taxes , while he only paid $750 in US income taxes.

System making

It has long been known that Trump, like many wealthy people, has been able to take advantage of the country’s complex tax code to avoid paying as much of his income to the federal government as working families do. When he was pressed on not paying federal taxes in a 2016 debate against Democrat Hillary Clinton, Trump retorted, That makes me smart.

It also features a two-tier tax system that allows wealthy people like Trump to take advantage of breaks and loopholes unavailable to regular households. In 2020, for example, Trump reported ownership of more than 150 private corporations that claimed losses, sometimes in the millions of dollars. Partly by claiming those losses, Trump reduced his own federal income tax liability to zero that year.

Some of the losses are real as the coronavirus pandemic wreaks havoc on the economy. But others show special deductions that developers like Trump can take to depreciate buildings and equipment.

Some losses Trump claims may be more questionable one of the companies he reportedly owns is called Unreimbursed expenses. The Joint Committee on Taxation noted that one of the Trumps’ companies claimed $438,000 in losses for gift card redemptions and urged further investigation into whether the losses were actually one of several deductions for which the Democratic -controlled committee called for further investigation.

These are the kind of deductions the typical American household, earning $70,000 a year, cannot afford.

No charitable giving was reported in 2020

In the last year of his presidency, Trump reported no charitable donations.

That’s in contrast to the previous two years, when Trump reportedly made about $500,000 worth of donations. It is unclear whether any of the figures include his promise to give his $400,000 presidential salary back to the US government.

Trump, who boasts of being a billionaire, told The Associated Press in 2015 that he gives to hundreds of charities and people in need.

He said, This is one of the things I like to do the most and one of the good reasons to earn a lot of money.

He reported larger donations in 2016 and 2017, donating $1.1 million the year he won the presidency and $1.8 million in his first year in office.

Money from the art world

Trump collected a $77,808 annual pension from the Screen Actors Guild, as well as a $6,543 pension in 2017 from another film and TV union, and reported acting earnings as high as $14,141 in 2015, according to tax returns.

Trump has made cameo appearances in various films, most notably Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, but his biggest on-screen success came on his reality TV shows The Apprentice and The Celebrity Apprentice, where each episode ends in a boardroom setting with Trump dismissing a contestant with his trademark phrase: Youre fired!

Trump also reportedly paid more than $400,000 from 2015 to 2017 in fees to book writers. In 2015, Trump published the book, Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again, with a ghostwriter.

In 2015, Trump reported receiving $750,000 in fees for speaking engagements.

Trump promised payment

Trump broke with political tradition by not releasing his tax returns as president. Now Republicans are warning that Democrats will pay a political price by releasing what is normally confidential tax information.

Trump himself emphasized that in a statement Friday morning after his returns were made public. The great divide in the USA will now grow, Trump said. The Radical Left Democrats have used everything, but remember, that is a dangerous two-way street!

Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee, which has jurisdiction over tax matters and released the Trump documents, warned that in the future the committee could release the returns of labor leaders or Supreme Court justices . Democrats have opposed a proposal to require the release of tax returns of any presidential candidate legislation that is unlikely to pass, as Republicans control the House next week.

Interestingly, the GOP cannot release President Joe Biden’s tax returns because they are already public. Biden continued a long-standing bipartisan tradition of releasing his tax records, revealing 22 years worth of his filings during his presidential campaign.

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Republished with permission of The Associated Press.

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