New York Times Investigation: Donald Trump paid just $750 tax in his election year
This bombshell comes on the eve of the first WH2020 TV debate
With polling day in the US just five weeks and one day away a huge development this morning is a New York Times investigation into the incumbent’s tax affairs – something that he has fought hard to avoid being made public.
This is how the paper sums up what it found:
Donald J. Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes the year he won the presidency. In his first year in the White House, he paid another $750. He had paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years — largely because he reported losing much more money than he made….The tax returns that Mr. Trump has long fought to keep private tell a story fundamentally different from the one he has sold to the American public. His reports to the I.R.S. portray a businessman who takes in hundreds of millions of dollars a year yet racks up chronic losses that he aggressively employs to avoid paying taxes.
The report goes on:
Together with related financial documents and legal filings, the records offer the most detailed look yet inside the president’s business empire. They reveal the hollowness, but also the wizardry, behind the self-made-billionaire image — honed through his star turn on “The Apprentice” — that helped propel him to the White House and that still undergirds the loyalty of many in his base. Ultimately, Mr. Trump has been more successful playing a business mogul than being one in real life.
Trump himself has dismissed the report as “fake news”.
My guess is that this will only hurt Trump’s “base” in a minor way. Where it could potentially impact is with the large swathe of independent voters who four years ago went with him rather than Hillary Clinton.
Having to deal with this is also going to take the oxygen out of his campaign as all the focus will be on trying to put out this fire. Meanwhile the election day gets closer.
I’ve now extended my Biden position on the SportingIndex spread market where the more you are right the more you win. I have bought at 294 electoral collage voters extending my previous position.