NYT reports Trump tax dodge
Newspaper hints at an 18-year avoidance
MANHEIM: Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump faced another headache late on Saturday — The New York Times ran a story that said that, based on a tax document it obtained, Mr Trump declared a US$916 million (about 31.6 billion baht) loss on his 1995 income — a deduction so large it would have allowed him to legally avoid paying federal income taxes for 18 years.
The Trump campaign said the Times “illegally obtained” a 20-year-old document and applied a misleading spin.
“Mr Trump is a highly skilled businessman who has a fiduciary responsibility to his business, his family and his employees to pay no more tax than legally required,” the statement said. “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, along with very substantial charitable contributions.”
The Trump statement did not provide specifics.
Mr Trump’s refusal to release his tax returns — as every presidential nominee has since the 1970s — has been a constant source of criticism from Democratic rival Hillary Clinton and her allies.
The New York businessman says he doesn’t want to release his returns because they are under audit.
In its story, the Times said it hired tax experts who reported that “rules that are especially advantageous to wealthy filers would have allowed Mr Trump to use his $916 million loss to cancel out an equivalent amount of taxable income over an 18-year period”.
The Times added: “Although Mr Trump’s taxable income in subsequent years is as yet unknown, a $916 million loss in 1995 would have been large enough to wipe out more than $50 million a year in taxable income over 18 years.”
The tax story surfaced as Mr Trump delivered a speech in Pennsylvania that included scathing attacks on Ms Clinton, on items ranging from her public record to her physical and mental health to the state of her marriage to former president Bill Clinton.
“This was a poor attempt to bamboozle people out of paying attention to the smoking gun report on his tax returns,” tweeted
Ms Clinton’s spokesman Brian Fallon.
In a statement, the Clinton campaign said: “This bombshell report reveals the colossal nature of Donald Trump’s past business failures and just how long he may have avoided paying any federal income taxes whatsoever.”
Mr Trump tried on Saturday to ride out the controversy with an appeal to Bernie Sanders supporters. Perhaps preparing for next weekend’s second debate, Mr Trump attacked Ms Clinton over her past support for trade, her record during three decades in national politics, her big money donors and what he called “Clinton corruption”.
“She should be in prison,” Mr Trump told supporters at a sports complex near Lancaster, spicing his speech with cracks about Ms Clinton’s health and her near-fainting a month ago. At one point, Mr Trump said his Democratic rival “could be crazy”.
Mr Trump combined his attacks on Ms Clinton with denunciations of trade agreements that he says have sucked manufacturing jobs out of Pennsylvania and other states — an argument designed in part to appeal to Mr Sanders’ supporters. During his Democratic primary battle against Ms Clinton, the Vermont senator also criticised free trade.
“He was right about one thing — only one thing — and that was trade,” said Mr Trump, who also accused “Crazy Bernie” of betraying his supporters by endorsing Ms Clinton.
Mr Trump was more than 100 minutes late to his only political event of the day. Awaiting his appearance, the crowd occasionally booed as the same set of songs looped on the public address system. “Turn it off. Turn it off,” the crowd chanted at one point. Like other Republicans throughout the day, Mr Trump played up to Mr Sanders’ backers by citing the release of a hacked audio recording in which Ms Clinton could be heard talking about Mr Sanders’ supporters.
During a f undraiser i n February — shortly after losing the New Hampshire primary to Mr Sanders — Ms Clinton described his supporters as “children of the Great Recession” who are “living in their parents’ basement” and are dissatisfied with their lack of opportunities.
“There’s just a deep desire to believe that we can have free college, free healthcare, that what we’ve done hasn’t gone far enough and that we just need to, you know, go as far as, you know, Scandinavia, whatever that means,’’ she said. “Half the people don’t know what that means, but it’s something that they deeply feel.”