Trump’s Tax Troubles

In just the few days since the New York Times published its latest groundbreaking report, Donald Trump has faced ongoing fallout from his “legally dubious” tax avoidance that even his own lawyers thought wouldn’t hold up to IRS scrutiny – as well as new reporting on his various efforts  to avoid paying millions in taxes. The ongoing reporting underscores the urgency of Trump releasing his tax returns before Election Day. While his campaign has objected to these stories, they refuse to release his tax returns – including just-filed returns that would not be under audit – to provide evidence of any untruths.

His behavior also raises important questions, including one that was posited by the New York Times Editorial Board: “Why would a man who has spent most of his professional life avoiding the shared responsibility of taxes all of a sudden care about helping others, especially those less fortunate?”

NEW Reporting

New York Times: Donald Trump Used Legally Dubious Method to Avoid Paying Taxes: “Tax experts who reviewed the newly obtained documents for The New York Times said Mr. Trump’s tax avoidance maneuver, conjured from ambiguous provisions of highly technical tax court rulings, clearly pushed the edge of the envelope of what tax laws permitted at the time. ‘Whatever loophole existed was not ‘exploited’ here, but stretched beyond any recognition,’ said Steven M. Rosenthal, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center who helped draft tax legislation in the early 1990s.”

Wall Street Journal: Income Taxes Aside: Donald Trump’s Other Tax-Avoidance Moves: “The Journal has found several additional examples of state and local tax issues for Mr. Trump and his companies that are little known or not previously reported on.”

1. “A vendor said in a legal deposition in 2008 that Mr. Trump refused to pay $48,000 in sales taxes on draperies for a Las Vegas property.”

2. “At least five federal, state and local tax collection agencies took out at least 26 liens on Mr. Trump’s businesses and him personally since the late 1990s due to claims that Mr. Trump or his businesses didn’t pay sales taxes, withholding taxes, or other corporate taxes.”

3. “The biggest amount in liens and warrants, totaling about $11.8 million, were for corporate taxes imposed on his Indiana casino business in the early 2000s.”

Washington Post: This is the portrait of Donald Trump that his charity bought for $20,000: “Tax experts say that if Trump hung the painting at one of his homes or businesses, he may have violated laws against “self-dealing.” Those laws prohibit charity leaders from using money from their nonprofits to buy things for themselves, or for their businesses. In recent weeks, The Washington Post has reported other instances in which Trump may have violated those rules.”

Additional Fall-Out

New York Times Editorial Board: Avoiding Taxes, Trump-Style: “Indeed, even as Mr. Trump’s lawyers were advising him against this approach, one tax expert wrote that trying to find legal support for it was like trying to find evidence for ‘the existence of the Loch Ness monster.’”

Washington Post: A big, dirty secret from Donald Trump’s tax returns has been exposed: “Experts had missed Trump’s maneuver, Kleinbard said, because they did not think that it would have been allowed at the time… ‘The real surprise here is that he apparently got away with it’ … Kleinbard said that he would have enjoyed bringing Trump to court on behalf of the authorities in order to force him to pay up. ‘I would have been certain that I would have won.'”

Vox: Two experts say Donald Trump should be investigated for criminal tax evasion: “Various aspects of this almost certainly violate the laws governing charities (he’s already been sanctioned by the state of New York), but several experts are also raising the question of whether Trump is guilty of criminal tax evasion… But both Philip Hackney, a former IRS attorney now working as a professor of tax law, and Adam Chodorow, a tax law professor at Arizona State University, have written that the elements exist to at least begin an investigation.”

New York Times: How Donald Trump Avoided Paying Taxes Using Other People’s Money: “The story of how Mr. Trump sidestepped a potentially ruinous tax bill emerged from documents recently discovered by The Times during a search of casino bankruptcy filings. Mr. Trump structured his companies to allow him to have lucrative personal tax advantages, while limiting his personal liability should business go bad.”

Vanity Fair: How Donald Trump Used Other People’s Money to Avoid Paying Taxes: “Donald Trump is both unapologetic about using “other people’s money” whenever possible, and proud of the way he allegedly avoided paying income tax for years by writing off nearly a billion dollars in losses, as The New York Times first reported last month. Now, a new trove of documents obtained by the Times reveals how Trump combined both of those things to wipe out his liabilities, using investors’ money to avoid reporting hundreds of millions of dollars in taxable income in the form of canceled debt on his floundering casino empire—a maneuver that even his own lawyers warned would likely get him in trouble with the I.R.S.”

Mother Jones: NYT: We’ve Figured Out How Trump Gamed the Tax System: “If I’m reading this right, the basic story is that Trump gave his banks “New Bonds” in place of their old bonds and classified the new bonds as equity shares in the casino partnership. Trump then valued the equity as equal to the old debt, thus showing no net loan forgiveness and therefore no COD income. This despite the fact that, in reality, the equity was close to worthless.”

Vox: Donald Trump used a dubious loophole to make millions in taxable income disappear: “He has previously boasted publicly of his extensive and detailed knowledge of the tax code, which seems like a good prima facie reason to at least look into it a little. And the New York Times’s latest revelations show a man who was deliberately and knowingly aggressive in his tax strategies in other realms of his personal finances, intentionally pushing forward with a strategy his lawyers said would likely be disallowed.”

MSNBC: Trump stretched tax loopholes ‘beyond any recognition’: “The fact that Donald Trump didn’t pay federal income taxes for many years is not in dispute – because the Republican presidential candidate admitted it during a nationally televised debate. There is some question, however, about whether or not Trump’s exploitation of tax loopholes was entirely legal…. Don’t try this at home. Trump has tried to get away with tax maneuvers the typical American should not attempt.”

Los Angeles Times: Clinton renews calls for Trump to release tax returns following report he skirted laws: “Trump’s attorneys advised him at the time that if he were audited, the Internal Revenue Service would not look favorably upon the tactic, according to the report. For months now, Trump has eschewed releasing his tax returns, claiming he was under audit by the IRS. However, even while being audited, Trump could still release his returns, experts have said.”

Slate: We Now Have an Even Clearer Picture of How Brazenly Trump Tried to Avoid Paying Taxes: “Now, thanks to the latest investigation of Trump’s taxes by the New York Times, our portrait of Trump as a taxpayer is a little bit clearer: He isn’t just a businessman who’s so brilliant he managed to lose, either outright or on paper, close to $1 billion. He’s also one who tried to push the law to its limits—and perhaps past them—to avoid paying the tax man.”

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Avoiding Taxes, Trump-Style

New York Times

Editorial Board

November 1, 2016

Donald Trump’s claim that he was smart for figuring out how not to pay federal income taxes was obnoxious when he said it, at least for the millions of Americans who pay their fair share. Now we learn that he was able to avoid some of those taxes decades ago with a tactic that is illegal now and was highly dubious even then.

In the 1990s, with his Atlantic City casinos and other businesses tottering on the verge of collapse, Mr. Trump negotiated a deal under which his creditors — investors and banks — would forgive part of the debt in exchange for equity in partnerships he controlled. Without such swaps, Mr. Trump would have had to report the forgiven debt as income, offsetting a big portion of the $916 million loss he claimed on his tax return in 1995. That loss allowed him to avoid paying taxes for up to 18 years.

It is impossible to know whether the Internal Revenue Service challenged Mr. Trump’s use of the swaps because, unlike every major party presidential nominee for nearly 40 years, he refuses to release his tax returns. But as The Times reported on Monday, the maneuver was so suspect that his lawyers advised against it.

And it’s clear that even then tax officials and federal lawmakers were hoping to end the practice because it allowed businesses and rich individuals to avoid taxes by swapping forgiven debt with equity that was worth little or nothing. Indeed, even as Mr. Trump’s lawyers were advising him against this approach, one tax expert wrote that trying to find legal support for it was like trying to find evidence for “the existence of the Loch Ness monster.”

Congress barred such swaps by corporations in 1993, and by partnerships, the business structure Mr. Trump uses, in 2004.

As is its habit, Mr. Trump’s campaign chose to regard these latest revelations as yet another display of his genius. But like any other effort to game the tax system, his tactics imposed real costs by shifting the burden to taxpayers who have no recourse to such strategies and must pay full freight, including people whose taxes are withheld and cannot shelter their income even if they want to.

It has become ever more difficult for the I.R.S. to police the kind of tax avoidance Mr. Trump has engaged in. The Republican-controlled Congress cut the I.R.S.’s budget by about $500 million in 2015, and last year the agency audited just 0.8 percent of individual taxpayers, down from 1.1 percent in 2010. Its enforcement staff has shrunk by 23 percent since 2010, to 39,000 people, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

The latest disclosures about Mr. Trump’s taxes also further undercut the argument that he is uniquely qualified to fix what he has called a rigged system. Why would a man who has spent most of his professional life avoiding the shared responsibility of taxes all of a sudden care about helping others, especially those less fortunate? The truth is, of course, that he has no intention of doing so; according to a recent analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, Mr. Trump’s tax proposals would confer by far the greatest advantages on the wealthiest Americans.

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Statement on Trump’s “Legally Dubious” Tax Avoidance Scheme

Calls on Trump to Release at Least 2015 Tax Returns, Which Are Not Under Audit

Yesterday, the New York Times published new documents that showed Trump engaged in “legally dubious” schemes to avoid paying millions in federal income taxes, even as his own lawyers made clear they likely would not hold up to IRS scrutiny. Trump’s campaign claims the reporting is not true, yet they refuse to produce the only evidence that could prove the Times wrong: Trump’s tax returns.

In response to the new report, Hillary for America deputy communications director Christina Reynolds issued the following statement:

“In the wake of a blockbuster report showing that even Trump’s own lawyers thought the IRS would likely find the “legally dubious” scheme he used to avoid taxes was against the law, the Trump campaign still refuses to release his tax returns. While breaking a precedent running for 40 years, Trump has clung to the excuse that he is under audit, despite no proof that he is and no prohibition for releasing returns under audit. Given that Trump was required to file his 2015 taxes recently, he has no reason to withhold it since it is too soon for him to possibly be under audit for those year. There’s no excuse left for Trump—if he’s not still using these “dubious” schemes to avoid paying taxes, he needs to prove it with his most recent tax returns.”

Trump and his campaign continue to dodge disclosure of these critical documents that could shed light on important issues including his wealth, his questionable charitable giving, his foreign and domestic business entanglements, his personal tax rate and more. The Times’ reporting raising important new questions that underscore the urgency in releasing the tax returns before Election Day.

Key Point: “As he scrambled to stave off financial ruin, Mr. Trump avoided reporting hundreds of millions of dollars in taxable income by using a tax avoidance maneuver so legally dubious his own lawyers advised him that the Internal Revenue Service would likely declare it improper if he were audited.”

• “Tax experts who reviewed the newly obtained documents for The New York Times said Mr. Trump’s tax avoidance maneuver, conjured from ambiguous provisions of highly technical tax court rulings, clearly pushed the edge of the envelope of what tax laws permitted at the time. ‘Whatever loophole existed was not ‘exploited’ here, but stretched beyond any recognition,’ said Steven M. Rosenthal, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center who helped draft tax legislation in the early 1990s.”
• “One letter, 25 pages long, analyzed seven distinct components of Mr. Trump’s proposed tax maneuver. It found only “substantial authority” for six of the components. In the stilted language of tax opinion letters, the phrase “substantial authority” is a red flag that the lawyers believe the I.R.S. can be expected to rule against the taxpayer roughly two-thirds of the time. In other words, Mr. Trump’s tax lawyers were telling him there were at least six different reasons the I.R.S. would likely cry foul if he were audited.”
• “Regardless of whether the I.R.S. objected, Trump’s tax avoidance in this case violated a central principle of American tax law, said Mr. Buckley, the former chief of staff for Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation, who later served as chief tax counsel for Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee. ‘He deducted somebody else’s losses,’ Mr. Buckley said.”

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Donald Trump Used Legally Dubious Method to Avoid Paying Taxes

New York Times

By: David Barstow, Mike McIntire, Patricia Cohen, Susanne Craig, and Russ Buettner

October 31, 2016

Donald J. Trump proudly acknowledges he did not pay a dime in federal income taxes for years on end. He insists he merely exploited tax loopholes legally available to any billionaire — loopholes he says Hillary Clinton failed to close during her years in the United States Senate. “Why didn’t she ever try to change those laws so I couldn’t use them?” Mr. Trump asked during a campaign rally last month.

But newly obtained documents show that in the early 1990s, as he scrambled to stave off financial ruin, Mr. Trump avoided reporting hundreds of millions of dollars in taxable income by using a tax avoidance maneuver so legally dubious his own lawyers advised him that the Internal Revenue Service would likely declare it improper if he were audited.

Thanks to this one maneuver — which was later outlawed by Congress — Mr. Trump potentially escaped paying tens of millions of dollars in federal personal income taxes. It is impossible to know for sure because Mr. Trump has declined to release his tax returns, or even a summary of his returns, breaking a practice followed by every Republican and Democratic presidential candidate for more than four decades.

Tax experts who reviewed the newly obtained documents for The New York Times said Mr. Trump’s tax avoidance maneuver, conjured from ambiguous provisions of highly technical tax court rulings, clearly pushed the edge of the envelope of what tax laws permitted at the time. “Whatever loophole existed was not ‘exploited’ here, but stretched beyond any recognition,” said Steven M. Rosenthal, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center who helped draft tax legislation in the early 1990s.

Moreover, the tax experts said the maneuver trampled a core tenet of American tax policy by conferring enormous tax benefits to Mr. Trump for losing vast amounts of other people’s money — in this case, money investors and banks had entrusted to him to build a casino empire in Atlantic City.

As that empire floundered in the early 1990s, Mr. Trump pressured his financial backers to forgive hundreds of millions of dollars in debt he could not repay. While the cancellation of so much debt gave new life to Mr. Trump’s casinos, it created a potentially crippling problem with the Internal Revenue Service. In the eyes of the I.R.S., a dollar of canceled debt is the same as a dollar of taxable income. This meant Mr. Trump faced the painful prospect of having to report the hundreds of millions of dollars of canceled debt as if it were hundreds of millions of dollars of taxable income.

But Mr. Trump’s audacious tax-avoidance maneuver gave him a way to simply avoid reporting any of that canceled debt to the I.R.S. “He’s getting something for absolutely nothing,” John L. Buckley, who served as the chief of staff for Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation in 1993 and 1994, said in an interview

The new documents, which include correspondence from Mr. Trump’s tax lawyers and bond offering disclosure statements, might also help explain how Mr. Trump reported a staggering loss of $916 million in his 1995 tax returns — portions of which were first published by The Times last month.

United States tax laws allowed Mr. Trump to use that $916 million loss to cancel out an equivalent amount of taxable income. But tax experts have been debating how Mr. Trump could have legally declared a deduction of that magnitude at all. Among other things, they have noted that Mr. Trump’s huge casino losses should have been offset by the hundreds of millions of dollars in taxable income he surely must have reported to the I.R.S. in the form of canceled casino debt.

By avoiding reporting his canceled casino debt in the first place, however, Mr. Trump’s $916 million deduction would not have been reduced by hundreds of millions of dollars. He could have preserved the deduction and used it instead to avoid paying income taxes he might otherwise have owed on books, TV shows or branding deals. Under the rules in effect in 1995, the $916 million loss could have been used to wipe out more than $50 million a year in taxable income for 18 years.

Mr. Trump declined to comment for this article.

“Your e-mail suggests either a fundamental misunderstanding or an intentional misreading of the law,” Hope Hicks, Mr. Trump’s spokeswoman, said in a statement. “Your thesis is a criticism, not just of Mr. Trump, but of all taxpayers who take the time and spend the money to try to comply with the dizzyingly complex and ambiguous tax laws without paying more tax than they owe. Mr. Trump does not think that taxpayers should file returns that resolve all doubt in favor of the I.R.S. And any tax experts that you have consulted are engaged in pure speculation. There is no news here.”

Mr. Trump financed his three Atlantic City gambling resorts with $1.3 billion in debt, most of it in the form of high interest junk bonds. By late 1990, after months of escalating operating losses, New Jersey casino regulators were warning that “a complete financial collapse of the Trump Organization was not out of the question.” By 1992, all three casinos had filed for bankruptcy and bondholders were ultimately forced to forgive hundreds of millions of dollars in debt to salvage at least part of their investment.

The story of how Mr. Trump sidestepped a potentially ruinous tax bill from that forgiven debt emerged from documents recently discovered by The Times during a search of the casino bankruptcy filings. The documents offer only a partial description of events, and none of Mr. Trump’s tax lawyers agreed to be interviewed for this article.

At the time, Mr. Trump would have been hard-pressed to pay tens of millions of dollars in taxes. According to assessments of his financial stability by New Jersey casino regulators, there were times in the early 1990s when Mr. Trump had no more than a few million dollars in his various bank accounts. He was so strapped for cash that his creditors were apoplectic when they learned that Mr. Trump had bought Marla Maples an engagement ring estimated to be worth $250,000.

It is unclear who first glimpsed a way for Mr. Trump to dodge a huge tax bill. But the basic maneuver he used was essentially a new twist on a contentious strategy corporations had been using for years to avoid taxes created by canceled debt.

The strategy — known among tax practitioners as a “stock-for-debt swap” — relies on mathematical sleight of hand. Say a company can repay only $60 million of a $100 million bank loan. If the bank forgives the remaining $40 million, the company faces a large tax bill because it will have to report that canceled $40 million debt as taxable income.

Clever tax lawyers found a way around this inconvenience. The company would simply swap stock for the $40 million in debt it could not repay. This way, it would look as if the entire $100 million loan had been repaid, and presto: There would be no tax bill due for $40 million in canceled debt.

Best of all, it did not matter if the actual market value of the stock was considerably less than the $40 million in canceled debt. (Stock in an effectively insolvent company could easily be next to worthless.) Even in the opaque, rarefied world of gaming impenetrable tax regulations, this particular maneuver was about as close as a company could get to waving a magic wand and making taxes disappear.

Alarmed by the obvious potential for abuse, Congress and the I.R.S. made repeated efforts during the 1980s to curb this brand of tax wizardry before banning its use by corporations altogether in 1993. But while policy makers were busy trying to stop corporations from using this particular ploy, the endlessly creative club of elite tax advisers was inventing a new way to circumvent the ban, this time through the use of partnerships.

This was the twist that was especially beneficial to Mr. Trump. Wealthy families like the Trumps often own real estate and other assets through partnerships rather than corporations. Mr. Trump, for example, owned all three of his Atlantic City casinos through partnerships, an arrangement that allowed casino profits to flow directly to his personal tax returns when times were good.

But what if times were bad? What if Mr. Trump’s casino partnerships could not repay hundreds of millions of dollars they owed to bondholders? And what if the bondholders were persuaded to forgive this debt? Wouldn’t that force the partnerships — i.e., Mr. Trump — to report hundreds of millions of dollars of taxable income in the form of canceled debt?

Enter the tax advisers with their audacious plan: Why not eliminate all that taxable income from canceled debt by swapping “partnership equity” for debt in exactly the same way corporations had been swapping company stock for debt.

True enough, the I.R.S. and Congress had clearly signaled their disapproval of the basic concept. Fred T. Goldberg, who was the I.R.S. commissioner under George Bush, recalled in an interview that the I.R.S. frowned on partnership equity-for-debt swaps for the same reason it objected to corporate stock-for-debt swaps. “The fiction is that the partnership interest has the same value as the debt,” he said. Lee A. Sheppard, a contributing editor to Tax Notes, wrote in 1991 that trying to find a legal justification for this tactic was akin to proving “the existence of the Loch Ness monster.”

On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump boasts of his mastery of tax loopholes and claims no other candidate for the White House has ever known more about the tax code. This background, he argues with evident disgust, gives him special insight into the way wealthy elites buy off politicians and hire high-priced lawyers and accountants to rig the tax system — just as, he claims, they rig elections.

That insight was on display in 1991 and 1992 when he was laying the groundwork to make a multimillion-dollar tax bill disappear.

Before proceeding with his plan, Mr. Trump did what most prudent taxpayers do — he sought a formal tax opinion letter. Such letters, typically written by highly-paid lawyers who spend entire careers mastering the roughly 10,000 pages of ever-changing statutes that make up the United States tax code, can provide important protection to taxpayers. As long as a tax adviser blesses a particular tax strategy in a formal opinion letter, the taxpayer most likely will not face penalties even if the I.R.S. ultimately rules the strategy was improper.

The language used in tax opinion letters has a specialized meaning understood by all tax professionals. So, for example, when a tax lawyer writes that a shelter is “more likely than not” going to be approved by the I.R.S., this means there is at least a 51 percent chance the shelter will withstand scrutiny. (This is known as an “M.L.T.N.” letter in the vernacular of tax lawyers.) A “should” letter means there is about a 75 percent chance the I.R.S. will not object. The gold standard, a “will” letter, means the I.R.S. is all but certain to bless the tax avoidance strategy.

But the opinion letters Mr. Trump received from his tax lawyers at Willkie Farr & Gallagher were far from the gold standard. The letters bluntly warned that there was no statute, regulation or judicial opinion that explicitly permitted Mr. Trump’s tax gambit. “Due to the lack of definitive judicial or administrative authority,” his lawyers wrote, “substantial uncertainties exist with respect to many of the tax consequences of the plan.”

One letter, 25 pages long, analyzed seven distinct components of Mr. Trump’s proposed tax maneuver. It found only “substantial authority” for six of the components. In the stilted language of tax opinion letters, the phrase “substantial authority” is a red flag that the lawyers believe the I.R.S. can be expected to rule against the taxpayer roughly two-thirds of the time. In other words, Mr. Trump’s tax lawyers were telling him there were at least six different reasons the I.R.S. would likely cry foul if he were audited. In anticipation of that possibility, the lawyers even laid out a fallback plan that would have allowed Mr. Trump to spread the pain of a large tax hit over many years if the I.R.S. ultimately balked.

It is unclear whether the I.R.S. ever challenged Mr. Trump’s use of this specific tax maneuver. According to a financial disclosure statement prepared by Mr. Trump’s accountants, he was under audit by tax authorities as of 1993, only a year after he avoided reporting hundreds of millions of dollars in taxable income because of this legally suspect tactic. But the results of that audit are unknown and the agency declined to comment on Monday.

Regardless of whether the I.R.S. objected, Mr. Trump’s tax avoidance in this case violated a central principle of American tax law, said Mr. Buckley, the former chief of staff for Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation who later served as chief tax counsel for Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee.

“He deducted somebody else’s losses,” Mr. Buckley said. By that Mr. Buckley means that only the bondholders who forgave Mr. Trump’s unpaid casino debts should have been allowed to use those losses to offset future income and reduce their taxes. That Mr. Trump used the same losses to reduce his taxes ultimately increases the tax burden on everyone else, Mr. Buckley explained. “He is double dipping big time.”

In any event, Mr. Trump can no longer benefit from the same maneuver. Just as Congress acted in 1993 to ban stock-for-debt swaps by corporations, it acted in 2004 to ban equity-for-debt swaps by partnerships.

Among the members of Congress who voted to finally close the loophole: Senator Hillary Clinton of New York.

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HFA Statement on Mike Pence Releasing His Tax Returns

In response to Vice Presidential Candidate Mike Pence’s release of his tax returns, HFA Deputy Communications Director Christina Reynolds said:

“We’re pleased to see that one member of the Trump ticket has decided to meet the long-held threshold for disclosure in a modern day presidential campaign. But it’s Donald Trump – who just this week attacked America’s generals and showered praise on Russia’s authoritarian leader – running to be our next president. Trump has continued to hide behind fake excuses to avoid coming clean with the American people, thumbing his nose at a basic level of transparency practiced by every major party nominee since 1976. As prominent Republicans have speculated, Trump’s returns could reveal further ties to Russia and its oligarchs, the truth about his personal wealth, or more lies about his charitable contributions. But we won’t know until we see them. According to a recent poll, more than than six in 10 Republicans are now asking: what is Trump hiding?”

Last month, Tim Kaine released 10 years of tax returns. On the same day, Hillary Clinton released her 2015 personal tax return, building on the Clintons’ tradition of making their returns public since 1977. You can view both Clinton and Kaine’s returns here.

Considering Trump has released his taxes under audit before, and his actions help determine the speed at which the IRS can complete the audit, why won’t Trump release his tax returns and what is he hiding? Here’s a few theories:

1. Trump may not be worth the $10 billion that he claims
2. Trump may pay little to no income tax
3. Trump is deeply in debt and owes more than a hundred million to a foreign bank
4. Trump wrongly undervalues his properties to local tax men
5. Trump is making a “flood of cash” from running for president
6. Trump is taking tax breaks he shouldn’t
7. Trump is hiding his lack of charitable donations

Here’s 5 FACTS we know about Trump’s tax returns:

1. In multiple years in which we know Trump’s tax rate, he paid a rate of 0%
2. Trump promised millions in charity, but reportedly gave less than $10,000 over a period of 7 years
3. Trump has accepted a grant intended for small businesses affected by 9/11
4. Trump has repeated accepted a tax break intended for middle-class people
5. Trump might not even be undergoing an audit in the first place – and he refuses to present a letter from the IRS, sent to every individual who is audited, to prove it

Prominent Republicans question what Trump is hiding in his tax returns:

George Will: “Perhaps one more reason why we’re not seeing his tax returns is because he is deeply involved in dealing with Russian oligarchs.”

Mitt Romney: “Either he’s not anywhere near as wealthy as he says he is” or “There’s a bombshell in Donald Trump’s taxes.”

Mark Sanford: “I Support You, Donald Trump. Now Release Your Tax Returns.”

Is there ANY way to make Trump release his tax returns?  Last month, Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Member Chris Murphy called for the Senate to vote on their bill, the Presidential Tax Transparency Act, to require presidential nominees to release their tax returns after their conventions.

In the meantime, media, pundits, and Americans across the country continue to challenge Trump to release his tax returns.

New York Times: Letters to the Editor: “Why Won’t Trump Release His Taxes?”

Washington Post Editorial: “Even Mike Pence appears to disagree with Trump on releasing tax returns”

Huffington Post: “Even Donald Trump’s Supporters Are Telling Him To Release His Tax Returns”

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News Source: NPR

HFA Responds to Trump Foundation’s Involvement in Actual Pay-To-Play Scandal

In response to a new Washington Post report revealing that the Internal Revenue Service has fined Donald Trump for using funds from his charitable foundation to make a campaign donation to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, Hillary for America Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri released the following statement:

“Donald Trump has been falsely attacking the charity run by President Clinton when it is Trump’s own Foundation that has been caught in an actual pay-to-play scandal.

While the Clinton Foundation has received the highest ratings from independent charitable watchdogs, Donald Trump’s use of foundation money to donate to the Florida Attorney General actually broke the law. Worst of all, it appears the payment may have been intended to stave off an investigation into the sham Trump University that has ripped off unsuspecting students.

Donald Trump has no standing whatsoever to question the Clinton Foundation, which works to make AIDS and malaria drugs more accessible, when it’s been proven he uses his own foundation to launder illegal campaign donations.”

Below is a key excerpt from the Washington Post bombshell:

Trump pays IRS a penalty for his foundation violating rules with gift to aid Florida attorney general

By David A. Fahrenthold

Donald Trump paid the IRS a $2,500 penalty this year, an official at Trump’s company said, after it was revealed that Trump’s charitable foundation had violated tax laws by giving a political contribution to a campaign group connected to Florida’s attorney general.

The improper donation, a $25,000 gift from the Donald J. Trump Foundation, was made in 2013. At the time, Attorney General Pam Bondi was considering whether to investigate fraud allegations against Trump University. She decided not to pursue the case.

Read the full article here.

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Clinton Campaign Calls for Trump’s Tax Returns

On Thursday, Hillary for America released information and a new television ad calling the lack of tax returns from Donald Trump into question. While Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine have made their tax returns public, Trump has yet to do so. View the ad and read the HFA’s release below.

Donald Trump’s Tax Returns: What’s He Hiding?

For 40 years, major party nominees have publicly released their tax returns – a simple and basic disclosure, made to the American people as they determine which candidate is best fit for the presidency. In accordance with this decades-old tradition, Hillary Clinton has made nearly 40 years of tax returns available to the public over the course of her career, dating back to 1977. You can find the past 9 years of her returns here.

Unfortunately, Donald Trump refuses to release his tax returns, despite his promise in 2014 that he “absolutely” would release them if he ran for president. Watch Trump promise to release his returns here.

TRUMP: “If I decide to run for office, I’ll produce my tax returns, absolutely, and I would love to do that.” 

Of course, Trump changed his mind when he actually became a candidate for president.

TRUMP: “I want to release my tax returns but I can’t release it while I’m under an audit.”

TRUMP: “There’s nothing to learn from them.”

TRUMP: “It’s none of your business.”

Contradicting his own logic, Trump has released his tax returns while under audit in the past – when the disclosure of his tax returns would benefit his business interests – such as his application for a license to open a casino.

CNN: “Donald Trump insists he won’t release his tax returns during his 2016 presidential run because those returns are the subject of ongoing Internal Revenue Service audits.  When he’s had casinos on the line, it’s been a different story.”

Further, Trump has the ability to slow down the audit of his tax returns depending on his rate of response to the IRS – meaning he may be able to make his poor excuse, that his audit prevents his tax return disclosure, last as long as he wants.

WSJ: “Donald Trump says he will release his tax returns when an IRS audit concludes… the Republican presidential nominee omits one major point: He and his attorneys have substantial knowledge about when the audit will end and some ability to slow the process.”

Considering Trump has released his taxes under audit before, and his actions determine the speed at which the IRS can complete the audit, why won’t Trump release his tax returns and what is he hiding? Here’s a few theories:

1. Trump may not be worth the $10 billion that he claims
2. Trump may pay little to no income tax
3. Trump is deeply in debt and owes a hundred million to a foreign bank
4. Trump wrongly under values his properties to local tax men
5. Trump is making a “flood of cash” from running for president
6. Trump is taking tax breaks he shouldn’t
7. Trump is hiding his lack of charitable donations

Here’s 5 FACTS we know about Trump’s tax returns:

1. In multiple years in which we know Trump’s tax rate, he paid a rate of 0%
2. Trump promised millions in charity, but reportedly gave less than $10,000 over a period of 7 years
3. Trump has accepted a grant intended for small businesses affected by 9/11
4. Trump has repeated accepted a tax break intended for middle-class people
5. Trump might not even be undergoing an audit in the first place – and he refuses to present a letter from the IRS, sent to every individual who is audited, to prove it

Prominent Republicans question what Trump is hiding in his tax returns:

George Will: “Perhaps one more reason why we’re not seeing his tax returns is because he is deeply involved in dealing with Russian oligarchs.”

Mitt Romney: “Either he’s not anywhere near as wealthy as he says he is” or “There’s a bombshell in Donald Trump’s taxes.”

Mark Sanford: “I Support You, Donald Trump. Now Release Your Tax Returns.”

Is there ANY way to make Trump release his tax returns?  Yesterday, Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Member Chris Murphy are calling for the Senate to vote on their bill, the Presidential Tax Transparency Act, to require presidential nominees to release their tax returns after their conventions.

In the meantime, media, pundits, and Americans across the country continue to challenge Trump to release his tax returns.

New York Times: Letters to the Editor: “Why Won’t Trump Release His Taxes?”

Washington Post Editorial: “Even Mike Pence appears to disagree with Trump on releasing tax returns”

Huffington Post: “Even Donald Trump’s Supporters Are Telling Him To Release His Tax Returns”

For all the latest, follow our Scheduled Events page and follow Clinton on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. Also, be sure to subscribe to the campaign’s official Podcast, With Her.

Clinton Campaigns with Warren Buffett in Omaha

On Monday, Hillary Clinton traveled to Omaha, Nebraska where she was joined by billionaire businessman Warren Buffett. During his speech, he called out Republican Donald Trump for his questionable business practices and bankruptcies. The focus of his attacks on Trump, however, was the fact he has not released any of his tax returns. He told the crowd that Trump isn’t afraid of his financial practices, but he is afraid of what the American public will think of his finances. He said, “You’re only afraid if you’ve got something to be afraid about. He’s not afraid because of the IRS, he’s afraid because of you.”

Clinton then took the stage and spoke about a number of the same issues she covered during her convention speech last week. She pledged to improve both higher and early childhood education systems, build the middle class by increasing the minimum wage and adding more higher paying jobs, and she promised to invest in the country’s infrastructure creating jobs in the process. “If we invest in infrastructure we’re going to put millions of people to work, and we’re going to lay the foundation for new jobs,” she said. Clinton argued that rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure and investing in alternative forms of energy will make the United States the clean energy superpower of the world. A video from the event is below.

For all the latest, follow our Scheduled Events page and follow Clinton on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

News Source: Omaha World-Herald, KETV, Bloomberg