In his first three years as president, Donald Trump he paid $1.1 million in federal income taxes before paying no taxes as his income declined and losses increased again in 2020, according to tax data released Tuesday by a House committee.
The data, which includes details of Trump’s federal tax returns from 2015 throughout his tenure in the White House, show he began his presidency by suffering the kind of huge corporate losses that had defined much of his career and hasn’t paid next to nothing in income taxes. .
But his fortunes changed in 2018, as he posted adjusted gross income of $24.3 million and paid nearly $1 million in federal taxes.
Trump’s tax returns show he was profitable the following year as well, reporting income of $4.4 million and paying $133,445 in taxes.
But in 2020, as the country reeled under the coronavirus pandemic, its finances reversed course:
Trump has stated a few losses of $4.8 million and zero income taxes.
The new details about Trump’s taxes emerged from two reports released on Tuesday by the House Ways and Means Committee, which was in a legal battle to get Internal Revenue Service documents going all the way to the Supreme Court.
The reports contain the summary of the results of the commissionbut not the raw tax returns, which are expected to be released in the next few days.
The new information adds to what is publicly known about Trump’s tax records, something he had struggled for years to keep under wraps.
Two years ago, The New York Times detailed data from more than two decades of Trump’s income statements and the hundreds of companies that make up his corporate organization.
Those records basically told a story different than it had sold to the American public.
His reports to the IRS portrayed a businessman who made hundreds of millions of dollars a year but built up chronic losses which he used aggressively to avoid paying taxes.
But while the Irpef data analyzed by the Times referred only to his first year in the White House, 2017, the information published on Tuesday covers his entire presidency.
As the Times previously reported, Trump paid just $750 in federal income taxes and posted losses of $12.9 million in his first year as president, in line with a long-standing pattern of reporting losses and paying little or no taxes.
Newly released data shows that his sudden burst of revenue in 2018 came largely because he sold properties or investments at a profit of $22 million.
It also appears to have used up year-over-year business losses to reduce its taxable income.
The specific source of income income is not clear from the reports.
In 2020, however, Trump had again declared losses.
In fact, despite capital gains boosting his profits in 2018, all of his core businesses, primarily real estate, golf courses and hotels, continued to post losses each year, totaling $60 million during his presidency.
I could recover $5.47 million because he had earned millions of dollars in estimated tax payments that he ultimately didn’t owe.
Tuesday’s report also raises questions about some of Trump’s business practices, and the committee asked the IRS to further investigate some of them.
Among them are their own charitable contributions.
Tax records previously obtained by the Times show that Trump has made significant charitable donations over the years, but that the vast majority of them have come in the form of land donationsoften after exhausting efforts to develop them.
New tax data showed that while in the White House, Trump made cash contributions to charity, something the House committee said deserves further investigation.
“We would have asked whether the large cash contributions were supported by the required justification,” the report said.
The Times’ findings were cited several times in the report and helped make it way to deal of the commission’s investigation.
For example, Trump owns a farm in Westchester County, New York called Seven Springs.
For years it was classified as a personal residence.
Tax documents obtained in 2020 by the Times showed that in 2014, Trump reclassified the property as investment property.
Since then, he has forgiven $2.2 million in property taxes as business expenses, even when the law only allows people to forgive $10,000 in property taxes per year.
On Tuesday, the committee revealed that the IRS was looking into this tax move.
Reports also show that Trump has continued to raise large sums of interest income, totaling $38.1 million during his presidency.
They don’t disclose the source of that income, but tax returns previously obtained by the Times showed that through 2017 nearly all of his interest income came from his share of the profits made by a partnership controlled by Vornado Realty Trust.
The company owns two valuable office towers:
1290 6th Avenue, in Manhattan, and 555 California Street, in San Francisco.
Trump, who owns a 30% stake in the company, has no authority over its management, and has always been its most profitable asset.
c.2022 The New York Times Company
Source: Clarin
Mark Jones is a world traveler and journalist for News Rebeat. With a curious mind and a love of adventure, Mark brings a unique perspective to the latest global events and provides in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of the world at large.