No income source in tax bill leak

Trump earned $150m in 2005, paid $38m in taxes at an overall rate of 25%

The White House acknowledged late on Tuesday that Donald Trump paid $38 million in taxes in 2005, a rare view into the president’s jealously guarded finances that was leaked to the US media.

Mr Trump reported an income of $150 million, and paid an overall tax rate of around 25 per cent. But the leaked summary document does not show the sources of his income, which would confirm or deny allegations of controversial ties with Russian businesses.

The White House confirmed the details of Mr Trump’s 2005 taxes just before David Cay Johnston, a Pulitzer Prizewinning investigative journalist, and MSNBC said they would reveal the short filing. Mr Trump has refused to release his full tax returns since he began his quest for the US presidency, shattering decades of tradition among candidates of all political parties.

Mr Trump also wrote off more than $100 million in business losses to reduce his tax burden, the document shows. The White House described it as a “large-scale depreciation for construction.”

The two-page snapshot was broadly favourable to the White House and appeared to back up Mr Trump’s claim that he paid his fair share of taxes, and no more.

“The documents show Trump and his wife Melania paying $5.3 million in regular federal income tax — a rate of less than four per cent,” Mr Johnston wrote in a post on the Daily Beast website. “However, the Trumps paid an additional $31 million in the so-called ‘alternative minimum tax,’ or AMT.” The AMT was originally designed to prevent rich taxpayers from using excessive loopholes, and Mr Trump has previously called for its elimination. Appearing on MSNBC with centre-left commentator Rachel Maddow, Mr Johnston said that he did not know the source of the leaked return, which had been placed in his mailbox. “Let me point out it’s entirely possible Donald sent this to me,” he said. “Donald has a long history of leaking material about himself when he thinks it’s in his interests.”

Donald Trump Jr. Was quick to claim victory over those who speculated his dad paid no taxes. “I don’t know much, but if I recall correctly $38,000,000 is a lot more than $0... Right???” he wrote on Twitter. The president has claimed, without evidence, that he would not release his taxes as he is under an Internal Revenue Service audit. The IRS has not confirmed that he is being audited — and even if he were, there is a precedent: president Richard Nixon released his taxes in 1973 while he was being audited. A Langer Research poll showed that almost threequarters of Americans believe he should release his tax returns.