The New York Times has obtained tax returns for Donald Trump covering a number of years exposing his lies, both as a ‘businessman’ and as a citizen. For many the bombshell fact will be that for many years Trump paid zero, nothing at all, in Federal Income taxes and in fact at one point claimed a tax credit, that is not a deduction that reduced his obligation but a credit where the US Federal Government paid him nearly 73 million dollars, a credit that was quite possibly fraudulent and if the IRS audit, yes he actually is under an audit for this particular credit, finds he abused the system to claim this credit then he could, on this one point alone, owe more than 100 million in taxes and fines.
In addition to this, the absurd sums deducted as business expenses, such as 70,000 dollars in haircuts (Do you remember GOP outrage at President Clinton’s $200 haircut?) and the possibly illegal nearly $800,000 ‘consulting fees’ paid to his daughter Ivanka, and the 400 Million dollars in debt coming due between now and 2024, that is during his second term should he pull off another electoral college victory, we need to remember his other financial shenanigans, the proven fraud of his non-profit foundation which the Trump’s used as a shell to hide money and their own personal piggy bank, and the dubious and secretive financial dealing with foreign powers.
But these frauds and tax schemes of Trump’s is not the larger scandal.
The larger, structural scandal is that so much of what Trump does is standard operating procedure for the massively wealthy. Wealth has captured the regulatory state and while the GOP slashes and burns their way through environmental regulations in the name of business and profit the wealthy dive through loops holes escaping what little tax burden the law does require of them. Until Trump leaped into the hot glare of presidential politics much of this, certainly his non-profit foundation scams, would have escape justice but he is far from the only one.
Should the Democratic Party regain the levers of power they should use this outrage to launch a new era of accountability for the wealthy and make false the bragging of one Leona Helmsley that, ‘We don’t pay taxes; only the little people pay taxes.’
