The HN angle on this article is the NYT accounts system wasn't prepared for the deluge of subscriptions, fell over, served 500s for hours, and now they made the article free-to-all (as far as I can tell) in response.
Get these journos some capacity planners and SREs.
I would have thought the HN angle is where do you draw the line between journalism and data leaks or identity theft? As much as large parts of the public wants to see his taxes, that doesn’t meant a newspaper can hide behind journalism to act as an intermediary to leak them.
If that’s the standard then I’m sure it’d be fine for an intern at Joe Biden’s doctors office to leak his full medical records right?
EDIT: I find it hilarious that this comment was immediately flagged and hidden from default view.
> Identity theft is the deliberate use of someone else's identity, usually as a method to gain a financial advantage or obtain credit and other benefits in the other person's name [..]
I don't think anyone can be impersonated based on tax documents, so I'm not sure why you would say that.
A valid journalistic act is putting forward information that the public can use to have a better picture about their environment. In my opinion this fits the definition pretty well.
On the other hand he called for a foreign country to hack into his opponents' email and release all of it. So, he obviously doesn't value privacy that much
In my opinion people in high visibility, high power jobs are not allowed to make tasteless jokes towards the people they have power over. It avoids such misunderstandings.
Especially on the topic of privacy, meticulously courteous didn't work, people just lied to your face. So this is at least another tactic. Doesn't seem like much though.
It wasn’t a joke because then it happened and he moved to capitalize on it. You should know that at this point so why are you pushing an inaccurate revision to history?
I disagree with you that medical data cannot be protected by stricter privacy laws. Tax returns could indeed be relevant to find conflicts of interest.
One could argue that holders of a public offices should be exempt of having their privacy protected, but I think it would lead to candidates that are better at hiding. The honest ones probably already lost interest in pursuing any office at that point.
I didn't downvote you and I think the smear campaign about Russian influence was a giant political scandal, no matter what you think about Trump. Somehow it is not because nobody seems to be interested in it.
Does anyone have any more detailed information about the losses, specifically from the real estate side of his businesses?
Real estate can frequently show a tax loss from depreciation while generating cash flow. But depreciation only applies to improvements, and it sounds like the golf courses are a significant part of the losses. I don't know enough about golf courses to determine if depreciation is a big factor here.
The article says "What the tax records for Mr. Trump’s businesses show, however, is that he has lost chunks of his fortune even before depreciation is figured in. The three European golf courses, the Washington hotel, Doral and Trump Corporation reported losing a total of $150.3 million from 2010 through 2018, without including depreciation as an expense."
So this is negative cashflow, not counting depreciation.
Reading the detailed breakdown, the only things he's done or invested in that have not lost money are two early properties he was forced out of but left a small stake in, and his reality TV appearances. Everything else has lost money.
To add to this: Trump International Hotel (the one in DC) was put on the market in Oct. 2019 for $500M. There were no buyers before the sale offering was canceled due to coivd-19.
You don't put a marquee property on the market if it is making money. Especially the one in DC. Especially while you are the current US president.
For those that don't want to click through: He is on the hook personally for hundreds of millions of dollars in debt that will come due next few years during his potential second term with no obvious way of paying it off. There's no way of knowing who has control of it.
Edit: and also from the thread, he owes > $1 Billion in total to lenders.
How can anyone seriously support him being in a position of power if this is true. The opportunity to buy that debt and call it as leverage to extract political gain is so easy and obvious. Does any of this debt trade on any market? If so a hedge fund could basically have puppet strings on the federal government.
Simple: it is not “true” to those who support him. They are told a completely different story - one of a successful businessman with unbending will, unfairly persecuted by the media, here to manifest God’s plan.
Yes, including that last one. Talk to any fundamental Christian on why.
First of all, as president he shouldn't have any private business interests. Second, under all standard policies, he wouldn't get the most basic security clearance with this fact pattern. Third, saying some other institution or GOP constituent could backstop is PART OF THE PROBLEM, then he is beholden to them, how is that a solution. Fourth, he deliberately withheld this information as part of a years long cover up, contrary to all prior norms, and we now know why, that alone should disqualify him from office. How much tribal blindness are we willing to accept in politics at this point?
You bring up many good points, none of which I strongly disagree with.
My only point was that it's not "easy and obvious" to "buy his debt and use it as leverage to extract political gain". There are many "outs" he can take if such an event occurred.
I started my career as a lawyer in 2008. I specialized on corporate bankruptcies and worked on many of the high profile cases we all read about. I can tell you I saw this first hand. I saw a hedge fund by a loan from a small community bank for $150k and use it to gum up the works and extract $50M. I guarantee Trump is at high risk of danger here. The legal system can absolutely be weaponized and with over $1B of debt there’s no way to know who owns every dollar. The thing is what if money isn’t what they demand? You’re assuming that they will accept payment of their debt. But with leverage comes opportunities for other demands. It’s actually terrifying to think of all of the things one could demand from a president or government under these circumstances. Absolutely insane.
Commercial real estate loans are often non recourse. You lend to the holding company who owns the property. If it fails you don’t necessarily have a claim on the owners of that company.
And I would expect covid to have decimated the value of commercial real estate, particularly hotels.
No. Recourse loans are listed on tax filings separately from non-recourse. The personal guarantee means it shows up on personal income statements. So no other records are needed.
You mean other than all of the past problems getting credit which forced him to seek out foreign funding in the first place? His businesses lose money and having so many bankruptcies where his partners have been left holding the bag is going to deter most bankers unless they have other ways to recoup their money.
Here’s an old report about his credit rating - note the “likely to default”:
The only bank that was lending to him, deutsche bank, literally had a board meeting and investigation to determine how he was able to bypass internal controls and get more loans after they had halted lending to him (he basically got the private wealth division to keep going after the commercial division said no more). If that is the most favorable lender left, future loans from anyone seem unlikely.
Is that a net position? I am not interested enough in the further details to try to figure it out for myself, but his net position is more important than the total debt.
He has had recent trouble selling his properties for the asking price. He put up Trump International (the DC hotel) on the market in Oct. 2019 for $500M. There were no buyers at that price before he took it off the market due to covid-19.
There is no indication that he has the resources to finance the debt. Nor is there indication that he does not have those resources. We simply do not know either way until a better picture of his finances comes out.
Does he though? He valued one property as $200M that was then later valued at $18M. He has a well documented history of inflating value estimates. He even claimed Trump Tower had more floors than it does (something so easy to count). So I would not just take the valuations at face value.
It's a great thread in that it exposes his fraud as a genius business executive and transparency on potential leverage that foreign entities use to gain even more control over him than they already have.
If you read the article, you'd see that there is a critical thing where he got a 70 million dollar refund, in a manner which probably violated IRS Guidelines. This has been debated since 2011, and has still not reached a decision. If the IRS (and Congress, since they need to sign off on all refunds for individuals > 2 million) declare that he was not entitled to that refund (which from the article seems like the way that it ought to go) he will owe back that 70 million with interest, putting it close to 100 million today.
No conflict of interest there. Nothing to see folks. This is total BS. At this point I am about to cut ties with my family that supports Trump. This is beyond anything approaching reason.
Are they actively supporting the church in gaining power to continue the abuse? Then, yes, cut ties. It's the active support of someone damaging the world that was my point. Trump has A HALF BILLION in PERSONAL liability... that is fundamentally disqualifying from holding office because it presents a profound national security risk. At this point anyone that supports him is risking the existence of our country. Just pick another republican at this point, enough is enough.
> Trump has A HALF BILLION in PERSONAL liability... that is fundamentally disqualifying from holding office because it presents a profound national security risk.
Yes, so what?
I am not going to stop talking to my mom because of that. It's not like 'she' votes trump cuz hates my country or goes to church cuz she hates children.
People are idiosyncratic and act like it. We live in the world of shades of gray. Good luck living with black and white standards.
Have you ever eaten KitKat? Well you support child slavery. Have you driven volkswagen well you drive a car from ex-nazi company, Apple phone, nike shoes... I can go on and on.
I really hope you are just hotheaded teen angry with how unjust the world is, then you are justified to feel like it :)
The direct harm Trump can do is clear and present in a way that eating a Kit Kat could never be. The office of president has access to ALL US intelligence and vast international intelligence. He could literally sell that after he leaves office. The harm a conflicted president could do is as greater than anyone on earth so all your examples pale in comparison.
I am not a hot headed teen. That’s an ad hominem attack meant to paint my position as childish and silly. You probably would have said the same thing before the American revolution, or the rise of Hitler.
At some point we need to draw a line between right and wrong. This is a very black and white situation. The government draws a very clear line when someone has debt that could be used to extort or manipulate them. Security clearance Ian it granted when that risk exists so you can attempt to muddy the waters and wave your hand that “morality is full of gray area” but this is not one of them.
Anyone that enables Trump after he says he won’t leave office or may run for a third term. Or support him after these financial disclosures would enable him to hold power under any circumstances and for any length of time.
The article lists several examples of things that go beyond avoidance. He paid millions in mysterious ‘consulting’ fees that appear to have gone to his kids, despite them being employees. He declared that he had no financial benefit in a business he walked away from despite still owning 5 percent of it. ...
Do the regulations require that such fees must be ‘honest’ ie be for actual work and proportional to the market value of that work?
Are the fees declared to the IRS and all relevant taxes paid?
No need to answer (it’s your private business), but just because petty abuses are common and rarely caught doesn’t mean they’re legitimate business practices.
Sure, but what's being implied in the article, and the years-long IRS investigation/battle, is that the constant declared losses were indeed tax fraud.
I think one of the issues is that he has simultaneously told the opposite story to his lenders, making himself look wealthier than he is in order to score loans. This, is fraud.
When I bought my house (borrowing roughly 200K) the bank wanted several years of tax returns and basically put my finances under a microscope. Pretty much everything except the anal probe.
So, you think a bank that's going to lend Trump 100 Million isn't going to examine his finances in greater detail?
Bold of you to assume the same rules apply to you and him. It's not even the same group of people evaluating your loan vs. his. Then they're going to evaluate his differently. Nobody's going to get promoted for landing your deal, but someone very well might for landing his. Yes, they'll look into his finances some, but they couldn't possibly probe every nook and cranny of such a large and complex empire where the dirty bits might be hidden. With greed nipping at their heels, they'll quickly convince themselves it's good enough. In short, not the same process or standards at all.
> In 2003, Deutsche Bank helped Mr. Trump’s casino company sell hundreds of millions of dollars in bonds.
> Mr. Trump’s company defaulted in 2004, leaving Deutsche Bank’s clients with deep losses. The bank’s investment division that sold the bonds vowed to not do business again with Mr. Trump
> A year later, though, Mr. Trump approached another part of the investment division for a $640 million loan to build a skyscraper in Chicago. It made the loan — and in 2008, Mr. Trump defaulted and sued Deutsche Bank. That prompted the whole investment division to sever ties with Mr. Trump.
> And then, three years after his previous default, Deutsche Bank started lending to him again, this time through the private-banking division that catered to the superrich. In fact, it lent Mr. Trump money that he used to repay what he still owed Deutsche Bank’s investment division for the Chicago loan.
> In 2016, the board of directors commissioned a report into how the bank had become so enmeshed with Mr. Trump
> The report, prepared by the board’s integrity committee, concluded that Deutsche’s private-banking division, which catered to very rich individuals, was so determined to win business from big-name clients that its executives had looked past Mr. Trump’s history of stiffing his lenders
So, try this: default on your ~200k mortgage. take out another, larger mortgage with the same bank. default on that one too, and then sue the bank for damages. then get a loan from the same bank to pay back your remaining debt from the second mortgage.
I'm skeptical that you could pull this off, and yet Donald Trump somehow managed to get comparable loans from Deutsche Bank.
For celebrities, and especially those with lots of properties in their name, it makes sense for a bank to give a huge loan and be assured that at the worst, properties will be attached.
Loans for a house are completely different from, say, loans for a commercial high rise, smack in the middle of New York.
The banks that originated his loans stood to make a percent profit when they resold them as securities on a secondary market. The bank probably did Less diligence on him than on your mortgage because they’re not regulated on such loans.
Commercial real estate is a completely different category from personal real estate.
Trump specifically has a long record of lying to commercial lenders and then daring them to foreclose. This was covered in his ghost-written book. It did not make Chase Bank look wise.
This is an absolutely critical point. Trump appears to be subverting institutions ranging from inspector generals to the military to the post office. I bet the IRS is his prime target.
There’s quite a large grey area between the two, to the extent that anyone who aggressively avoids tax using ‘state of the art’ accounting schemes is well aware that they’re on legal thin ice.
No person has an obligation, legal or moral, to pay a cent more in taxes than what they owe under the tax code. If you have a problem with people avoiding taxes, you can endeavour to change the tax code and plug those loopholes.
Otherwise, you’re really trying to solve a legal problem by social means. You’re perfectly in your right to do so, but plenty of people will disagree with you.
We're talking about a public servant. It just highlights a cutthroat selfishness in past actions and current politics.
>No person has an obligation, legal or moral, to pay a cent more in taxes than what they owe under the tax code.
But let me ask you something. Do you believe there is zero moral obligation or simply that the current tax code is at the absolute pinnacle of moral balance?
They're allowed. It's not illegal to act in a singular self interest. That doesn't mean everyone wants to elect someone who only works for their own self interest. We're talking about a public figure and that means they're subject to public opinion beyond the low bar of legality.
However, at this point this sort of thing is baked in to opinions of the president. I don't think anyone is surprised.
I’m of the opinion that no one should avoid taxes, so if you’re asking just about government employees, then the answer is still yes, they shouldn’t be allowed to.
What does that mean though? If the government introduces a new tax credit for home renovations that increase the energy efficiency of the home, are you saying no one should take advantage of that?
The problem I have with the word “tax avoidance” is that it carries negative connotations (which of course the media leap on in order to attack their preferred bogeyman). In reality, all that’s happening is that people are following the law and taking advantage of loopholes and tax credits to reduce their tax obligation.
If you think these loopholes and tax credits are unfair, then focus on fixing that. If you think the tax code is so enormous that it’s hopeless to fix it, then say that and offer an alternative. Otherwise you’re not really offering people an objective measure to live by.
That statement is meaningless. The government provides incentives and deductions for certain reasons (e.g. buying electric cars, home offices, charity contributions, etc.). It's put into law by the lawmakers.
How much do you choose to pay in taxes? How much do you think others should choose to? All discretionary income? All charitable giving? Some fixed percentage?
> Otherwise, you’re really trying to solve a legal problem by social means.
Haven't you noticed how over the past decade activists have started to bypass this whole democracy thing and instead legislate via Twitter mob? Plenty of people, many very influential, think we can shame our way to a better world --- their better world, of course, not yours or mine.
In my opinion: when you could be paying tens of thousands or more to support others, instead you are paying $0, and you know other people who barely make half the median household income are paying 20–30% of their total income.
Do these rules exist for other people? Yes! Is he possibly only taking advantage of what others allow him to do? Sure! Is it still selfish and trivially anti-social? Yes.
If they made it legal for billionaires to steal cars off the street, it would still be shitty for them to steal cars.
If you make half the median national household income, you’re making about $30K, and your effective federal tax rate is barely over 14%. Your 20%-30% scenario doesn’t seem to add up.
I think journalists will hesitate to equate sketchiness to crime as the latter is a legal finding after a formal investigation. They will tend to just point to sketchiness in suggestive language.
"Mr. Trump’s businesses appear to have benefited from his position, and his far-flung holdings have created potential conflicts between his own financial interests and the nation’s diplomatic interests"
I honestly don't understand why “tax avoidance” is meant to sound so naughty. Almost everyone avoids taxes, almost every time they might be subject to a tax; some people are just better at it.
When you fail to collect taxes from somebody who is following the law, that is a matter for your tax code, not a moral failing of the filer.
Judge Learned Hand (not the Supreme Court, but often quoted; I'm sure partly for the name):
"Any one may so arrange his affairs that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which will best pay the Treasury; there is not even a patriotic duty to increase one's taxes" (Gregory v. Helvering, 1934)
"Over and over again courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging one's affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everybody does so, rich or poor; and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands: taxes are enforced exactions, not voluntary contributions" (Commissioner v. Newman, 1947).
People can lower their taxes by buying alternative fuel vehicles, renovating historic properties, donating to charities, etc. Those laws are meant to encourage that behavior. But somebody using them to lower their taxes is engaged in tax avoidance. Is that wrong?
Many states have business tax laws that aren't as noble-minded but are meant to encourage businesses to hire people (e.g., no income tax) or operate from those states (e.g., favorable treatment of inventory). Is it wrong to take advantage of those tax laws?
In my opinion, the alternative minimum tax ( https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc556 ) is proof that the United States has given up on creating a system where tax deductions and tax credits always give a reasonable outcome.
Most of that was before the two tier tax system emerged, on for labor—which can not be avoided under any circumstances—and one for business owners which can actually result in negative tax rates.
Upon reading the story again, I realize they literally tell you he paid over four million dollars despite only owing about 1500 bucks. I don't know why people are so upset when he literally paid 2000x more tax than he owed.
As a normal American citizen, I often overpay taxes and then collect the amount I overpaid in my return. I certainty don't cook up elaborate schemes to avoid paying taxes. Does that make me stupid?
I consider it a moral responsibility to pay back the community college and state university system, as well as the state and country that gave me access to the infrastructure and opportunity to earn that taxable income.
You overpay during the year, but when you file your returns, do you intentionally deduct less than you’re allowed, or intentionally skip tax credits? I personally would prefer to have the government owe me money than owe the government money, but I do my best to make sure my taxes are accurate and I’m not in the hook for any more than I truly owe.
Things like the child tax credit aren’t really meant to encourage particular behavior, but others are. I have a 401(k) to save for retirement, but it also lowers my taxes (in my case, it lowers my future taxes). The tax break is meant to encourage me to get the 401(k). Am I a bad person for taking advantage of the tax break?
I'm thinking more in the category of buying a failing company in anticipation of using it's annual losses to create tax benefits.
The level at which you and I are engineering this stuff is kid's play. But that's kind of the idea. If you have extensive amounts of money, you hire a team to engineer getting you out of paying your fair share, I think the average person has the right to be upset about that, since all of that profit is earned on the backs of ordinary folks.
If someone wants to disagree, fair enough, but I'd be mainly interested in hearing from folks who can't afford to hire a team to engineer their way out of paying taxes.
I wouldn’t claim to be a tax expert. I was responding to a comment that used the term “overpay taxes” differently from how I would. Sure, if you overpay your estimated tax during the year, that’s overpaying. So is failing to use deductions and credits that you qualify for. I only wanted to clarify the distinction.
I’m happy to add that it’s no surprise people consider taxes when they make decisions, and in some cases tax incentives are specifically designed to change people’s behavior. It’s silly to be scandalized when their behavior actually does change. Not everybody agrees on which tax avoidance behaviors are perfectly acceptable (e.g., buying alternative fuels) and which are pure evil.
When people have a lot to lose, it’s no surprise that they hire tax experts. The US government gave up trying to design a system that always gives reasonable outcomes, and instead created the alternative minimum tax specifically for the scenario of rich people getting too creative with credits and deductions. If Trump truly received several million dollars of income in 2016 and legally paid a grand total of $750, then the alternative minimum tax isn’t doing its job and should be reworked.
If I'm understanding the article correctly, the New York Times isn't counting the millions it found that Trump paid in alternative minimum tax over the years when making all its big, attention-grabbing viral claims about how little income tax he paid because technically alternative minimum tax is a different, seperate thing from income tax.
They make a huge deal about the difference between Trump’s “I paid millions in total taxes” and their “he paid a tiny amount in income taxes,” and I overlooked where AMT would fit in that distinction.
From my experience, there is a lot of anger generated when those who have so much, avoid paying even the bare minimum compared to those who have very little.
The average lower-to-middle-income family with a mortgage and a couple of kids, sure they have a lot to worry about and they really need that money. Pay as little taxes as you can because what you save goes to feeding your kids, paying for college, and putting gas in the minivan.
Someone who is essentially playing a game (Trump) to maximize one number (income) while minimizing another (tax), I don't think a lot of people have a lot of sympathy for. Accumulating wealth really is a game at that point, no different than speedrunning RE2, or trying to YOLO options on Robinhood. It's not like Ivanka is putting the money into diapers, summer camp for the kids, and tires on the minivan.
In that sense, Trump doesn't have a lot to lose (anything to lose, really - just monopoly money). It's just numbers in a spreadsheet, it's not your kid's Christmas presents, or fixing the water heater, or getting a new set of tires on the family car. It's paying off Stormy Daniels who you slept with 4 months after your wife gave birth, Jared getting a fancy new tie, and your son Eric getting to go to Africa to shoot some new animal.
People are pissed. I think they have good reason to be. The system benefits those who are playing a game, and hurts those who are actually playing with real odds.
That’s not exactly a tax dodge strategy to get deeper in debt. More than likely, he just isn’t a good business person and fell for the sunk cost fallacy.
> I certainty don't cook up elaborate schemes to avoid paying taxes. Does that make me stupid?
Tax avoidance is legal, and if you're overpaying, it means you're giving the government money which you could have used in the meantime. I prefer to keep my money.
I put free candy on my porch, anyone can take some, someone take them all, isn't he bad for doing so? I would say kind of ;).
Thing is though, tax avoidance in the level Trump would have done is another layer way crazier. Most people can't take theses candies, but he can. At one point losing that much money over that many year start to be too much.
With tax avoidance on this scale, he had better hope that the records were truthful. If they were fraudulent, the this moves from tax avoidance to tax fraud.
It also shows that Trump is not the fantastic businessman that he has portrayed as his public persona
Tax avoidance that allows somebody to pay $750 tax on multimillion dollar income should, without question, trigger the alternative minimum tax ( https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc556 ).
Which is more likely, (a) that Trump’s accountants are creative enough to get his personal tax bill to $750 without triggering the AMT, that the IRS hasn’t been able to successfully challenge the returns, and the tax experts the New York Times spoke with for this story didn’t comment on that fact, or (b) the Times story is missing key details?
Quite a different thing though if you are head of government which is supposed to collect taxes from people like you, and you see no need to change that.
> Quite a different thing though if you are head of government which is supposed to collect taxes from people like you, and you see no need to change that.
His predecessors/competitors talk a big game, but they were in office for eight years; take a lucky guess whether it got easier or harder, under the Obama-Biden administration, for people in Donald Trump's business to deduct and reclassify almost all of their taxable transfers and incomes.
If there's an improper or unjustifiable deduction in these filings, then complain about that.
Nobody has any obligation, and essentially nobody has any private reason, to pay taxes that they do not owe. If you think they should owe taxes, then complain that they don't owe them, not that they won't pay what they don't owe.
As I recall, the Republican Congress actually cut funding to the IRS for tax enforcement during Obama's second term, so we actually don't know who's committing tax fraud. The audits just aren't being done.
Outside of the near meaningless confirmation of Trump's status as a "fake" billionaire and how that may affect his ego, there's is an alarming piece of information here.
The man owes hundreds of millions of dollars in personal loans that he may not be able to repay. They will come due during his second term. Given his lack of ethics it's worrying to me that a president could have that kind of leverage against him. Dangerous.
This is a HUGE distinction that gets glossed over because it's hard to see the implication from a headline. A lot of his critics pointing to his "bankruptcies" had focused on businesses going bust. So, fair enough, his casinos sucked, but knowing when to declare a business insolvent is a legitimate skill and not necessarily a sign of someone who is overall bad with money.
Taking on $300M against your own name is madness. What scares me the most is we needed personal returns just to figure that out. There's no way you can go into that much debt without significant foreign or less-legitimate lenders in the mix. The man's also in his mid-70s, so everyone must expect that if he dies next week, there's something they'll be able to collect from the estate. Combine that with how closely he's kept all his kids involved in his businesses and you have a man with everything to lose.
This was mentioned quite a lot in 2015, in my memory at least - especially in light of his business dealings in Russia but ultimately it's just conjecture. If it turned out to be true there's probably enough information in public to piece together a chronology but not without hindsight.
This is definitely the scariest takeaway. With a second being what he will do to avoid criminal charges if some of the things implied in the initial article end up being true and come to light.
I'm not sure why you are being downvoted. This is a very valid point. This is not just an ordinary man, this is the head of the executive branch of the United States of America.
That's far from the case. You might be running into the notice/dislike bias, which unfortunately tends to distort perceptions and leads to false feelings of generality.
That's why it has been standard practice for Presidential candidates and aspirants to release taxes and other financial disclosures before elections, and why it was such a big deal that Trump didn't.
I think that it should be law that the finances of the people at these levels of governence (maybe even down to the city level) be open to the public to review.
I didn't know that. I'm just completely speculating right now, but I wonder if that has something to do with Jared Kushner's denied security clearance. [1]
Does that apply to the President? (At this point it seems clear that nothing applies to the president; let’s hope to god that someone makes a new amendment for that.)
The president (and other elected positions) are carved out of those kinds of requirements: requiring an elected official to "pass" a background test created by unelected public servants amounts to an unintended check on representative democracy.
To be clear: we absolutely should require that elected officials disclose their finances. But we shouldn't require them to be vetted through a mostly unaccountable process after they've been elected.
In particular, because the President is the source of classification authority, the oversight functions that would normally be fulfilled by financial disclosures on forms like the SF-86 have traditionally been fulfilled by the electorate. The financial disclosures are part of the process of ensuring that people entrusted with national security information are "reliable, trustworthy, of good conduct and character, and loyal to the U.S." Candidates releasing their tax returns is a (less rigorous) process aimed at the same thing.
I'm pretty sure that after the unaccountable trillion dollar business backstop and the federal government acting as a supplier of PPE to private corporations this is no longer something we have to worry about.
This argument only works if you assume that clandestine payments and money laundering are impossible. You don’t think a foreign government could hide payments to someone? Inversely, you think bribes and shady payments from a government are going to show up on taxes? Haha. Come on. This does not settle anything related to Russia.
Will it - possibly not, on the one hand if you are supporting trump now what could possibly convince you although money is money: He's a terrible businessman, and he pays no tax. That's a huge amount of his appeal to some.
"He pays no tax" won't be a big deal since the Republican position has long been that tax breaks for Great Men are somehow good for the economy and therefore somehow good for everyone. "Terrible businessman" is the more interesting angle, but it will be covered up by the tax angle.
I think the most interesting angle here are the hundreds of millions of dollars of loans that will come due in his second term. That's pretty terrifying especially given that to get that amount of money would require questionable lenders.
Possibly marginally, but I would have thought that most people who’d be perturbed by this wouldn’t be voting for him anyway. I suppose there might be a few people who might otherwise be inclined to vote for him scared off by the national security implications of the massive personal debt (this was one of the things that REALLY worried people during the Cold War, as debt was a common angle used by the KGB to subvert people) but you’re probably not talking about a lot of people.
Hard no. This has been an ongoing plot line for 5 years now for those of us who avidly follow politics. There’s nothing here that I would be able to explain to anyone that would surprise them.
The real story is that they got leaked at all. I know there’s a huge left tile on HN so take your blue hat off for a minute and just think about this. The DNC has lusted after Trump’s returns for five years now. They finally acquired them (presumably at great expense) and published them immediately, not considering whether or not it would help their candidate. It stands to reason that they didn’t know what was in the returns if they went out of their way to obtain this nothingburger. Why publish them at all when you have the debate on Tuesday (that Trump will likely flub) that you could focus America on? Is the DNC more worried about this election than the polls show if they’re fishing like this?
Disclaimer: The polls are generally accurate IMHO. Biden has a ~75% chance to win and I agree with that. I also think “X candidate is in DEEP trouble in the polls”-type headlines help X candidate more than the opposition because higher voter turnout is triggered when voters think their votes will matter.
A related question: Can a president pre-emptively pardon himself? I think there was some deal being worked on Jeff Epstein's case where that could have happened.
This is actually an excellent, unsettled legal question. On the one hand, the Constitution provides almost no restrictions on pardons. On the other hand, there's a strong argument for precluding self-pardons based on the principle that "no man shall be the judge of his own case", despite no such principle being expressly expounded in the Constitution.
I highly doubt the president can pardon himself from anything. That flies in front of all precedent and I don't even think the conservatives on the supreme would be stupid enough to uphold such an idiotic attempt to escape justice.
He isn’t able to pardon himself from his obstruction of justice charges but if he steps down near the end and lets Mike Pence be president, Mike Pence can pardon him.
The Constitution doesn't restrict presidential pardons except in cases of impeachment. If Trump pardoned himself I am sure eventually the Supreme Court would have to rule on it.
If Trump applied for even the most basic national security related job that required the lowest level of security clearance, he absolutely would be denied. And yet, this man is president of the United States.
The government, as specified in the US Constitution, requires that candidates for president must be born in the US and over 35 years old. Assuming those requirements (and any others that may be added via amendments over time) are met, THEN it's up to the people.
For comparison, President Trump payed $750 in federal income tax in 2016 and 2017. I just looked it up and I, a graduate student who makes like $30k a year paid three times that amount last year.
Warren Buffett is in an entirely dissimilar boat, because Warren Buffett does not have enormous losses to carry forward, and therefore actually pays significant personal income tax ($1.8 million on personal income of $11.5 million in 2015).
I meant that he pays well below what you or I pay. He's in a lower tax bracket than his secretary. $1.8M on $11.5M is what? Something in the ballpark of 15%? He should be in the highest tax bracket. That's my point. The tax laws favor the wealthy, and they shouldn't.
That's a completely unrelated and distracting issue.
Trump paid $750 total, which is not 15% of anything. He could have easily paid $0, as he did before becoming POTUS. His team picked a tiny number above zero starting in 2016 when he was elected. This is completely and totally unrelated to the capital gains tax rate.
It's not unrelated. My point is that the wealthy have a whole lot of loopholes when it comes to taxes, and we ought to address that.
Almost certainly, Trump used these loopholes to minimize his taxes. I assume in his case, he had a lot of losses that he was able to use to bring his over all income down well below what you or I report in a given year.
Unless Trump did something illegal (entirely possible), my point is related and not distracting.
Where is the Alternative Minimum Tax? You know, that tax law that pops up frequently for high earners in the tech field when they have more deductions than seems fair? Why isn't Trump subject to the same minimum taxation that I would be?
I should have kept reading: Mr. Trump paid alternative minimum tax in seven years between 2000 and 2017 — a total of $24.3 million, excluding refunds he received after filing. For 2015, he paid $641,931, his first payment of any federal income tax since 2010.
So basically, the big headline "$750 in income tax" claim that's been repeated everywhere else and gone viral on social media is technically true but also massively misleading to the tune of millions of dollars? Guess that figures for media coverage of anything remotely involving Trump in 2020. Also, this Reuters piece is terrible at the time of writing my reply: https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-trump-taxes-idUKKBN26J... It makes it sound like the New York Times piece contradicts his claim to have paid many millions of dollars in taxes, when it actually seems to confirm it - but that detail is buried, obfuscated, and omitted from most of the coverage elsewhere of the NYT's reporting.
It looks like Trump has paid millions in taxes at some times but also has more than $1 billion in losses that have offset almost all of his taxes for decades. My takeaway is that he has been able to rake in huge amounts of money (like $200 million+ from the Apprentice) but he then pours it into businesses that appear to lose money on paper. He lives his life on the back on these businesses so his lifestyle is almost 100% deductible. He's found away to keep spending an extra 20% to 30% by avoiding income tax. However, he's also spending like a drunken sailor and currently has more than $400 million in loans due in just a few years with personal guarantees.
I think of Mitt Romney who last reportedly has $87 million in his IRA. You can't contribute more than $30k/yr to an IRA.
How do you get an IRA with close to 8 figures in it?
Same trick of filling your bosses locked office with balloons. Slip the balloons (worthless stocks) under the door and then blow them up from the outside.
> Tax lawyers and accountants suggest an answer: Romney may have made use of an Internal Revenue Service loophole that allows investors to undervalue interests in investment partnerships when first putting them into an IRA. These assets can produce returns far in excess of those that could be generated from other investments made at the capped level.
> An investor could even set an initial value for a partnership interest at zero dollars, because under tax regulations an interest in a partnership represents future income, not current value, said Chris Sanchirico, co-director of the Center for Tax Law and Policy at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
> Whether Romney used this technique, which is legal, when he put partnership interests into his IRA is a question that won’t likely be answered when he discloses his 2010 tax returns on Tuesday.
The AMT isn’t a hard minimum on federal taxes. It is a different set of rules for what incomes and deductions count towards the “income” figure AMT is calculated against. There are ways to pay less than AMT, legally, and this is a purposeful choice in its design. There are still certain adjustments allowed. See https://www.thebalance.com/alternative-minimum-tax-3192753
The problem here is that American culture has made you entitled. You think that, just because you can get into grad school and bump shoulders with the elite, you should be able to deduct $70,000 of haircuts, too.
All his properties are in corporations or limited liabilities, like almost every other business in the country. Those corporations do pay taxes. His securities, investments, etc. are in a trust, required by law, I believe, which would also pay taxes separately.
He donates to charity 100% of his US government salary. I'm wondering how he even owed $750 on federal taxes.
There’s an obvious public interest angle here; he has hundreds of millions of personal debt due during a potential second term, with no obvious way to pay it. If you can’t see the problems in that...
If it was some random guy pretending to be a billionaire, that would be one thing, but it seems totally reasonable for a paper to report on this.
Is it more unethical than a president, whose words and actions and directives directly impact the livelihood and wellbeing of hundreds of millions of people, being hundreds of millions of dollars in debt, possibly to foreign entities? Not only has he directly lied about his businesses and foreign business deals, he is in massive debt, with much of it not paid at all. That creates huge conflicts of interest. Is it ethical to have a sitting president wondering how he’ll pay off, potentially foreign lenders, during the middle of his term?
Yes it is totally ethical. What makes it unethical? America draws its leaders from the citizenry. Those citizens are allowed to borrow money, be in debt, and retain privacy of their confidential information. Entering politics doesn’t deprive them of their identity as a citizen.
That depends on the public interest. Are we talking about random John Does taxes which has a total of X dollars income/wealth?
X alone might be large enough warranting some public interest, on top of that, it isn't random Joe, it is a well known public figure, which derives its publicity in the very facts the article is investigating: his claims of personal wealth and business acumen.
Finally, that person is actually signing the tax code he is (ab?)using and he is facing a public vote on being in that position.
So, no it's not okay in every case, but this is hardly every case.
But it is still his finances as a private citizen, and not - for example - the details of some government agency. A matter being of interest to a subset of all citizens doesn’t justify its disclosure. We should either require disclosure by law (perhaps to an auditing firm instead of the public) or treat this as a purposeful and malicious leak of private, confidential information. I don’t think news media should get a pass on this.
If you say, a politician should only judged by ones public affairs and policies, and the press should not dig into private matters, I would generally agree.
But that is a major change, and to my knowledge never been the case in the US. Public figures, and once in a public office especially, have been in the news due to private information, usually more of the sexual kind, which resulted in the defenestration of said politician.
But to reiterate, the president chose to run for a public office on claims about his private finances. Those are challenged by information obtained by the press. And the press did not release the private, confidential information, but reported about information within it, pertaining to his claims.
That is bona fide, what the press is supposed to do. The person who gave the information to the press, on the other hand, likely has broken the law.
If a person has enormous debt, they are declined a security clearance. The fear is that whoever holds that debt has too much leverage over the debtor, and so could theoretically make them act however they wished.
These records reveal that Donald Trump has close to, or just over, one Billion dollars in debt for which he is personally on the hook, to unknown lenders, which are due within the next four years.
This is important news, but I don't understand the insistence of some people to post political news to this website. Seriously, this has very little to do with tech. Post it to Reddit or Twitter. I do not come here to read about Trump.
HN is pretty much the only place on the web where intelligent discussion takes place. That is why I hope for every news I am interested in to be discussed here.
Reddit discussions are complete garbage. The top comment on r/news for this article is this one line: "That's $750 more than I thought he paid.". It has over 19k likes.
It may be better than Reddit, but it's still not designed for political discussion. The voting algorithms lead to echo chamber formation or vapid, emotion-driven comments being given positive feedback without careful moderation. Human nature combined with anonymity means comments can dissolve into pointless bickering. Basically, it would require a ton of moderation(with the discussions picking up on the biases of the moderators), and even then it would still devolve with many comments about illegal immigration, gender issues, or pretty much any other social issue that involves identity.
No this not. Trump claimed not one but two annual losses greater than $1B. So large that they were among the largest losses ever recorded. He obtained a refund that requires direct congressional oversight but seems to have been paid prematurely and without the required act of Congress. And in fact the entire basis of the refund—that giving up all ownership of his Atlantic casinos allowed him to transfer their losses to his tax filings—cannot be maintained because he in fact kept 5% of the casios meaning the entire tax write of would be disallowed and may have been fraudulent filed in the first place is not something your random family business does. Further, even if that were the case that doesn’t mean it’s legal. You don’t get to pay employees consulting fees as well.
OT (apologies): I submitted a link about Trump's nomination for Supreme court; it was immediately killed as political. I checked to see if there was a thread about RBG before submitting.
Specifically you’re supposed to flag anything not within the guidelines[1]:
> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
The first two of these apply to "tech" companies, so you might include them in "hacking and startups" (though hardly under "intellectual curiosity"). The third is purely political and is definitely something that TV news would cover. But it visibly strikes a chord with HN's readership. The fourth is also political; Wikileaks involves email and web pages, but what doesn't nowadays?
Maybe you find that all of these should be flagged too. Maybe only the third one, I don't know. The weasel wording with "most stories" and "probably off-topic", in practice, allows these through, which is why I said that there is no (let me add: clear, explicit) rule against political submissions.
The problem (which I think you seem to be acknowledging) is that as I've pointed out in the original post, the lack of clarity seems to end up in a mysterious (arbitrary? biased?) view on what is ok to cover.
Yes, I agree that the lack of clarity leads to these ambiguities. I think it would be impossible to formulate really clear rules on what sort of politics is accepted. People definitely want to discuss "politics with a tech angle" stories, like ones concerning Uber. Many people also definitely want to discuss "very important pure politics" stories like this one, or RBG's death, or paternity leave. At the same time I think most people don't want HN to turn into a "general politics is just as accepted as tech stuff" kind of discussion forum. The line will always be very fuzzy. Maybe the difference between RBG's death and her possible replacement is that RBG has already had a huge, concrete impact on the (US-centric) world, whereas her replacement's impact is speculative at this point.
I want to see the actual documents before I believe this. I’m fine with the NYT refusing to make their source but I can’t think of any reason to keep the documents secret.
I'm going to focus on just one example from this report.
Seven Springs is a very large properly that he purchased, and claims and reports as an investment property. This allows deductions of all loan interest, upkeep/maintenance, and operating expenses.
Based on family statements in the past, the property is used primarily as a personal residence.
Reporting a personal property as an investment property in order to deduct expenses is not "tax avoidance", it is tax fraud.
Actually, it means you aren't paying your share for the services provided by the public.
The only people who think that tax avoidance is a good thing are the unethical rich and the American embarrassed millionaires who've been convinced to vote against their own best interests.
Tax avoidance has different colors. Some of it is totally fine, others is more concerning. I agree with you on the tone that is coming out that tax avoidance is wrong is totally bs. Tax evasion on the other hand is completely wrong and illegal.
I’m more concerned about how this information was sourced. Did it get leaked from the IRS or an accountant? It feels like that part of the story is the bigger deal. I love the NYT but this feels kind of like doxing and makes me very uncomfortable.
>It feels like that part of the story is the bigger deal.
You think that is the bigger deal? I suppose it is a variant of doxing, but it doesn't look like the NYT is going to post the actual returns, just their interpretation.
Yes, it's a big deal, because one of Trump's favorite tactics is to "leak" something through "anonymous sources" that later falls apart in a spectacularly-public way, leaving egg on the journalists' faces and Trump looking like the legitimate victim of a smear campaign.
The time for "anonymous sources" is over. No more. Back up the information, or don't publish.
Maybe I exaggerated a bit but for me they rob the impact of the story when others can be concerned about how the information was gained. Also it sets a bad precedent for when the dems are in power. * depending on how the information. Was gained *. And at the end of the day the information really is t anything that is all that shocking - it’s what I have (and many have) expected all along
I am reminded of the joke, "Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?"
I know how the information was gained: someone leaked it! I am surprised it took this long.
Was it an IRS employee who leaked it in violation of federal law? Was it someone at the accounting firm Trump uses? Maybe we will find out some day, maybe not.
To me the most amazing revelation is that he got paid nearly HALF-A-BILLION for the Apprentice! I really think we should start taxing our OTA networks for their use of the public airwaves, if they have that much $$ to throw around.
I think that is unclear at the moment and the NYT is not revealing it's source according to this[1]. It says they are declining to provide the tax filings to protect their sources at the bottom.
What are you suggesting? Growing up I was always told where there’s smoke there’s fire and this administration looks like it’s been smoldering since 2016.
> It feels like that part of the story is the bigger deal.
and I imagine people saying just that is why they avoid all mention: they don’t want that to become the story, because that’s how strategists deflect the attention from the actual headlines.
Just like (multiple) bogus draft deferments despite being a football player, where someone else has to go in your place (and possible chance they got killed) when you pay no taxes, someone else is carrying your burden.
$140 Billion in annual loses means you got to spend a lot of that and enjoy those benefits in the meanwhile.
Get these journos some capacity planners and SREs.