Put a fork in him. He is done...
http://www.smh.com.au/world/donald-trumps-leaked-tax-returns-reveal-6108-salary-20161002-grtbqv.html
Donald Trump's leaked tax returns reveal $6108 salary
Oh, that ordinary American taxpayers, about whom Donald Trump professes to worry sooooo much, could get a deal like a 1995 bonanza by which the US taxman gave the Republican presidential candidate a truly remarkable gift –
a deduction so massive that he quite likely paid no federal income tax for almost 20 years.
It can reasonably be rounded to $US1 billion. The actual amount was $US916 million. And on the basis of three key pages extracted from Trump's 1995 tax papers and mysteriously mailed to
The New York Times, tax experts estimate that the deduction would have amounted to a free pass for Trump's huge income for maybe 18 years.
Trump: 'No tax for almost 20 years'
The New York Times reports that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's 1995 income tax return suggests he may have paid no income taxes for up to 18 years.
The revelation comes on top of another unexplained deal by which the state of New Jersey, run by a Trump chum and campaign sidekick, Governor Chris Christie, wrote down a tax bill of close to $US30 million for Trump's casinos, to what amounted to petty cash for the poor little rich man from New York – just $US5 million or about 17 cents in the dollar and exceedingly more generous than was allowed for other casino operators on New Jersey's Atlantic City foreshore.
All American political candidates dread the euphemistic "October surprise" – a grenade that comes from out of left-field, packing enough political power to derail their campaign.
The New York Timeswent live with its tax bonanza story late in the evening on Saturday, October 1 – so indeed it qualifies as an early October surprise for the GOP candidate.
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Trump's political balls are bouncing badly. He emerged from the first candidates' debate on September 26 to a near unanimous view among analysts that the Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton had bested him – particularly by luring him into damaging admissions and bouts of his crazy-horse conduct that prompts questions about his temperamental suitability for the twin posts of president and commander-in-chief.
It was like a rerun of the aftermath of the July political convention season, when the Democrats were judged to have been superior performers, and Trump resorted to more than a week of behaviour that, politically, was near-suicidal – remember his merciless hounding of the immigrant Muslim family whose son had died heroically as a US Marine in Afghanistan?
It's been the same in the week since Trump's debate flame-out –
he has been lashing, even with 3am-ish tweets, former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, who Clinton revealed in the debate to have been a victim of Trump's appalling sexism and misogyny.
Trump's pursuit of the woman was so fierce, so relentless and so gob-smackingly stupid, that the story consumed an entire week's media oxygen – so much so, that several likely lines of inquiry based on exchanges during the debate did not get the attention they deserved.
Donald Trump's tax affairs are under the microscope. Photo: AP
One was Trump's tax. When Clinton went after him on his refusal to abide by political tradition and release his tax returns, Trump was as passive as the proverbial stunned mullet.
Almost as though he has been Tasered, he watched in silence as Clinton went through various reasons for him not wanting ordinary Americans to see his returns.
When she got to the possibility that he had not paid tax for some years, Trump interjected with words that were much less a denial than the kind of billionaire's boast one might hear whispered at the golf club – but certainly not in a political exchange being telecast across the US and the globe.
"That makes me smart," Trump exclaimed.
Seconds later, he again seemed to confirm he had not paid tax by the nature of his response to another Clinton jab: "If he's paid zero, that means zero for troops, zero for vets, zero for schools or health."
Trump: "It would be squandered, too, believe me."
So, on the basis of
The New York Times' report, maybe a billion bucks stayed in Trump's pocket – rather than be "squandered" on schools and hospitals, roads and bridges, and the other piffling indulgences that uppity American communities believe contribute to the quality of their life; and, of course, to which the poor mugs who religiously pay their taxes, do contribute.
Trump has argued that he can't release his returns because he is under audit by the Internal Revenue Service – which the IRS has said is no reason for Trump to not release his returns. One of his sons had argued cryptically, that releasing the returns would be "a distraction".
As before, at times in the coverage of matters American, we need to invoke a very important caveat – in this country, it's often conduct that is legal, not illegal, that is shocking.
Tax experts go out of their way to stress that what they can best glean on the calculations by which Trump's accountants arrived at a $US916 million deduction in 1995, all is perfectly above board – legally, that is; not morally.
The three pages from several documents that were mailed to the
Times – posted in New York and marked with Trump Tower as the sender's address – contain sufficient identifying information for authentication, and for experts to conclude that the deduction would have absolved Trump from paying any income tax on income of more than $US50 million for 18 years.
Remember that Trump won this tax gift because he had run his businesses so badly – while doing OK for himself. Between 1995 and 2009 he took about $US45 million in chairman's and other executive fees from the companies as stunned investors, who had believed his Midas-touch talk, saw their shares plummet from $US35.50 to just 17 cents, bondholders got just "pennies in the dollar" and scores of contractors went unpaid.
Joel Rosenfeld, assistant professor at New York University's Schack Institute of Real Estate, told the
Times: "He has a vast benefit from his destruction – do you realise you can create $US916 million in income without paying a nickel in taxes?"
In a statement in response to the
Times report, the Trump campaign did not deny its essential elements. It said: "Mr Trump is a highly skilled businessman who has a fiduciary responsibility to his business, his family and his employees to pay no more than that legally required.
"That being said, Mr Trump 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."
It seems unlikely to be an accident that the phrase "federal income tax" is missing from the tax litany in the Trump statement.
Then almost as though Trump can't help himself, the statement inadvertently goes to the question of why American voters might reasonably demand that he release his full tax returns – in the absence of a political record, Trump's claim on the presidency is based on his belief that he is the most brilliant businessman in the US.
The statement continued: "Mr Trump knows that tax code far better than anyone who has ever run for president, and he's the only one who knows how to fix it."
Trump himself hit out on Twitter with an almost identical pitch.
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