TRUMP TAX BOMBSHELL
$750 bill is lower than a nurse’s... or even Abraham Lincoln’s in 1860s!
JOE Biden acted last night to capitalise on revelations that billionaire Donald Trump paid only $750 in income tax in the year he was elected US President.
The Democratic presidential candidate’s team put out a brutal advert within hours of a New York Times investigation that also showed Mr Trump failed to pay federal income tax in ten of the 15 years before his election.
In an appeal to hardworking Americans, the advert highlighted how teachers, nurses and firefighters typically pay ten times as much annual income tax as the President’s paltry $750.
Historians pointed out that Abraham Lincoln paid almost three times as much when he introduced federal income taxes – $1,981.67 on a salary of $25,000 in 1864-1865.
The revelations about Mr Trump’s tax affairs came on the eve of tonight’s first live presidential debate of the campaign.
With five weeks until the election, the newspaper report – which the President dismissed as ‘fake news’ – threatens to undermine his support among blue-collar workers whose interests he claims to champion.
The New York Times investigation found Mr Trump paid no federal taxes in 11 of the 18 years it examined, despite apparently being worth $2.5billion (£1.9billion), due to staggering losses shown by creative accounting.
His property business has officially lost hundreds of millions of dollars, a stark contrast to the image of swaggering success that he cultivated while hosting The Apprentice televisions show.
Democrats rounded on the President and started selling stickers yesterday that read: ‘I paid more taxes than Donald Trump.’
Senator Elizabeth Warren tweeted: ‘He knows better than anyone that there’s one set of rules for the wealthy and giant corporations and another for hardworking Americans – and instead of using his power to fix it, he’s taken advantage of it.’
The New York Times obtained more than two decades of federal tax data which revealed that Mr Trump used giant losses to offset his income.
He is the first President in modern times to refuse to release his tax returns, falsely claiming he could not do so because he is being audited.
He tweeted yesterday he was ‘entitled to depreciation and tax credits’ and did nothing wrong.
It came as Mr Trump’s former campaign manager, Brad Parscale, was taken to hospital on Sunday amid concern that he had become suicidal. He had been forced out of the President’s team in July after organising a poorly attended rally.
Meanwhile, a new book by former aide Rick Gates claims Mr Trump wanted his daughter Ivanka to be his vice-presidential running mate in 2016 but she talked him out of the idea.