Trump’s tax payments revealed in leaked forms

PRESIDENT Donald Trump earned 153 million dollars (123 million) and paid 36.5 million dollars (£31 million) in income taxes in 2005, according to newly disclosed tax documents.

They show the billionaire paid a rate that was effectively just under 25% thanks to a tax he has since sought to eliminate.

The pages from Mr Trump’s federal tax return show the then-real estate mogul also reported a business loss of 103 million dollars (£85 million) in 2005, although the documents do not provide details.

The forms show Mr Trump paid an effective tax rate of 24.5%, a figure well above roughly 10% the average American taxpayer hands over each year. But it is below the 27.4% that taxpayers earning 1 million dollars a year average, according to data from the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.

The forms were obtained by journalist David Cay Johnston, who runs a website called DCReport.org, and reported on MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show.

Mr Johnston, who has long reported on tax issues, said he received the documents in the post, unsolicited.

Mr Trump said on Twitter: “Does anybody really believe that a reporter, who nobody ever heard of, ‘went to his mailbox’ and found my tax returns? @NBCNews FAKE NEWS!”

Mr Johnston, speaking to ABC’s Good Morning America, said it is entirely possible that he received the returns from Mr Trump himself or someone close to him, saying, “Donald has a long history of leaking things about himself”.

He noted that the real question remains the sources of Mr Trump’s income, saying Mr Trump does not want us to know “who he’s beholden to”.

Mr Trump’s hefty business loss appears to be a continued benefit from his use of a tax loophole in the 1990s, which allowed him to deduct previous losses in future years.

In 1995, he reported a loss of more than 900 million dollars (£740 million), largely as a result of financial turmoil at his casinos.

Tax records obtained by The New York Times last year showed the losses were so large they could have allowed Mr Trump to avoid paying taxes for up to 18 years.

But his 2005 filing shows another tax prevented him from realising the full benefit of those deductions.

The bulk of Mr Trump’s tax bill that year was due to the Alternative Minimum Tax, a tax aimed at preventing high-income earners from paying minimal taxes.

The AMT requires many taxpayers to calculate their taxes twice – once under the rules for regular income tax and then again under AMT – and then pay the higher amount.