The US House ways and means committee voted Tuesday night straight down party
lines to make former President Donald Trump's tax returns public.
Overnight, the panel released a committee report about its probe and
its initial review of the tax papers.
Revealing among other things, the IRS did not do
the mandatory presidential audits of Trump during his first two years in office, and
never completed any audits while he served.
>> They quickly concluded that in fact the audit did not occur.
>> That's despite Trump's perennial claims he couldn't share his taxes with
the public because he was under audit.
>> I've been under audit for so many years.
Every year I get audited.
>> He claims every year he would get audited, except that wasn't the case,
turns out the IRS was not conducting the appropriate audits of Donald Trump's tax
returns.
And remember he would cite that he was getting audited as an excuse for
not releasing his tax returns to the public, to be transparent with them.
Especially as all these accusations were being thrown around,
about his alleged business deals with foreign interests, well,
we've learned some other things through the reporting on his tax returns.
And keep in mind, the only reason why we know these details is because
the Supreme Court ruled against Trump.
Trump tried to shield the House committee seeking his tax
returns from being able to obtain them.
That battle went all the way to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court said,
sorry Trump, you gotta release your tax returns.
And those committees have also voted in favor of eventually releasing
those tax returns, a redacted version of them at least, to the public.
Now, what do we know so far based on the reports?
Well, he was very likely taking sketchy tax deductions in
order to save on paying federal taxes, and
we're gonna get to those juicy details in just a moment.
But his income is also fascinating, to say the least, because he was struggling,
losing money year after year, until 2018 came around.
So let's get to those details.
Trump's federal tax returns from 2015 through his full term in the White House
shows that he began his presidency suffering the large business losses and
paid almost nothing in income tax.
But in 2018 he reported 24.3 million in adjusted gross income and
he did pay taxes to his credit.
He paid nearly $1 million in federal taxes.
Now, he also made some money in 2019 as well, prior to the pandemic, of course,
Trump reported $4.4 million dollars in income, in 2019.
And paid $133,445 in tax, which seems
incredibly low considering the income he brought in that year.
But in 2020, Trump reported a loss of 4.8 million and zero-income tax.
Now, we don't know enough details yet, to figure out why it is that he
only paid a tiny, tiny percentage of his income to federal taxes when
he made a considerable amount of money in both 2018 and 2019.
You'd have to look at the deductions, and more importantly,
you'd have to look into whether those deductions are legal deductions.
Whether there are receipts for instance, proving that he spent the money or
has the losses that would qualify as tax deductions.
And mind you, when it comes to people in certain positions,
people with certain wealth,
they get to take advantage of deductions that the vast majority of Americans don't.
Now, if you have a business, a small business on Etsy for instance,
and you fail to report that you made $600 throughout the entire year,
you probably will get audited.
But for someone like Donald Trump, mm-hm, who was supposed to be audited,
that didn't happen.
Now, let's get to some more details here,
because we do have some other figures that are worth discussing.
For instance, Trump paid just $750 in federal income tax and
reported 12.9 million in losses in his first year as president, in
keeping with a long pattern of reporting losses and paying little or no taxes.
The newly released data shows that in 2018,
his sudden burst of income occurred largely because he had sold properties or
investments at again, of $22 million.
Now, he has also appeared to have exhausted some of the business
losses that he had been rolling over year after year,
in an effort to reduce his tax bill or his taxable income, I should say.
Ihe precise source though, of the income gain,
is not clear from the reports that have been released so far.
So we could learn more,
especially as we're now learning that these House committees have voted in favor
of releasing the redacted versions of the tax returns to the public.
But honestly, the most amusing part of this story so far for
me at least, is how conservatives have reacted to it,
which ranges from no reaction at all to Fox News almost celebrating this.
Not because they're celebrating the release of Trump's tax returns,
but because they don't really think it's a big deal.
That someone bringing in, in some cases,
tens of millions of dollars in a given year, ends up paying a tiny,
tiny percentage of those gains in federal taxes.
Obviously the percentage that ordinary working Americans have to pay much,
much higher.
So let's take a look at this Fox News graphic,
which again, amuses me, especially when you consider the image
they used of Trump doing his goofy Trump dance.
And of course they show his federal income taxes,
at least how much he paid from 2015 all the way to 2020.
Okay, now remember again, let me just reiterate, 2016,
2017, the vast majority of working Americans paid more in
federal taxes than this guy did, right?
And the real question is, were the deductions legitimate, and
that's something that these committees are looking to investigate, right?
So was there any fraud in the deductions that were noted in these tax filings?
Now, there are in fact some calls to investigate his charitable
donations that have been listed as deductions in these tax filings.
And also, the new tack data showed that while in the White House Trump,
made charitable contributions in cash,
something that he didn't do prior to the White House.
Prior to the White House, his charitable contributions
were carried out through property or real estate giveaways.
But in this case, we're talking about cash,
something the White House committee said warrants further investigation.
Quote, we would have inquired as to whether the large cash contributions
were supported by required substantiation, the report said.
Now, he might have taken other fraudulent deductions.
So again, this is all up for investigation.
Trump owns an estate in Westchester County, New York, called Seven Springs.
For years it was classified as a personal residence.
The tax records obtained in 2020 by the New York Times showed that in 2014,
Trump reclassified the estate as an investment property as opposed to
a personal residence.
Well, that that certainly has some ramifications when it comes to deductions.
So if you are citing your primary residence and
the property taxes that you might pay for that primary residence,
that is considered something that's tax deductible,
up to a certain amount, because of Trump's tax cuts for the rich.
And what I mean by that is, remember, he did away with the the SAT taxes,
the tax deductions you can take in some of these high tax states,
like California and New Jersey.
He placed a $10,000 limit, but what's really interesting is,
through these reports were learning that he actually
deducted property taxes at a much higher amount than $10,000.
Among the items the report says should merit scrutiny are tens of millions of
dollars in deductions claimed by Trump and his companie, including for
business expenses incurred while president.
And 126.5 million in write offs over five years tied to sales from
an entity that didn't appear to be selling anything.
And in regard to his property taxes, let's go to graphic seven here.
Since then, he has written off $2.2 million in property taxes as
a business expense, even as the law allows individuals to write off
only $10,000 in property taxes a year.
Again, because of Trump's tax laws, which were honestly meant
to punish blue states that tend to have higher state taxes.
So we would have known about that, and the IRS Would have known about
that if the IRS did the appropriate audits, but they didn't.
So while you could I guess, criticize Trump for maybe,
we don't know for sure yet, maybe taking unlawful deductions here,
the real issue in my mind, based on what we know so far, is the IRS.
And mind you, the IRS failed by design, because the IRS
has been consistently defunded by conservative lawmakers.
The same conservative lawmakers who lost their minds as soon as they found
out that Biden's legislation infuse some resources so the IRS would be
able to do audits of wealthy elite Americans who tend to dodge their taxes.
Remember, auditing someone like Donald Trump, auditing a wealthy businessman,
is much more complicated, is much more costly, and much more complex.
And if the IRS doesn't have the necessary resources to conduct those audits,
then they're going to shy away from conducting those audits.
And they're gonna focus all of their attention on
the you lowly vendor [LAUGH] who failed or made a mistake
in failing to report their $600 income on Etsy.
And when I say lowly, I'm just talking about the way our government treats
ordinary working folks versus elite individuals, wealthy individuals,
businessmen, who are known to lie, cheat, and look to dodge their taxes.
So, I wanna be critical of the IRS, but
I do think that we need to learn more details about what transpired here.
Why didn't the IRS do the appropriate audits?
Was it an issue pertaining to lack of resources or
was there something else going on?
And in regard to Donald Trump and the investigation into
the deductions he noted in these tax filings, we'll see what happens.
But remember, Alan Weissberg, the CFO,
Chief Financial Officer for the Trump organization,
he was prosecuted for the exact same reason.
He was found guilty and he got, honestly, a slap on the wrist.
And that's Alan Weissberg, that's not a former President of the United States.
So if anyone thinks that this investigation will lead to Trump serving
time behind bars, I think you are gonna be disappointed.
I could be wrong, but I think I'm right.
So we'll see how it all plays out.
We'll stay on the story and give you more as we learn more.
But for now, honestly, nothing really groundbreaking.
I'm just gonna keep it real with you guys, I'm not gonna sensationalize this and
make it seem like it's the biggest news story in the day.
We still have a lot to learn, I think.