Why we need to see Trump’s tax returns
So you and I and everyone else just paid a bucket load of taxes on Tuesday, or we already paid them and are maybe getting some back.
Painful as paying taxes may be, I am a strong believer in paying my fair share of taxes because I believe in the concept that taxes buy civilization, that if we citizens expect services from the government, we must pay for those services.
If we expect clean drinking water, clean air, unemployment insurance, filled potholes, Social Security, Medicare, education, medical care, an adequate military, beautiful national parks and safe streets, we must pay taxes to all the local, state and federal entities that make these things possible.
A lot of people never realized that one of the greatest benefits to come out of the Obama stimulus package of 2009-2010 was that the working poor and middle class got a very large tax cut – in the form of a higher standard deduction – making it a waste of time for many of us to itemize deductions because the standard deduction was higher.
Another major tax break that’s been around for a long time allows people and companies to offset capital gains with capital losses, not something we little people get to do with your bills and paychecks, but nice if you have money to invest and make some bad bets or the economy turns sour.
As we saw with the leak of the first two pages of his 1995 tax return, Donald Trump got to write off nearly $1 billion in capital losses against his capital gains over several years.
The first two pages of his 2005 tax return, also leaked, showed he made $150 million and paid $38 million in taxes that year, which I think we can agree was a respectable sum at a reasonable tax rate for a multi-millionaire real estate mogul.
But we didn’t get to see any details of those two returns, such as who he did business with.
He says people don’t care about his taxes and “the election is over and I won.”
(Just as an aside, having won an election does not put an end to any elected official’s obligations to to keep his campaign promises or to conduct himself while in office with honor and integrity.)
Thousands marched April 15 to show him that we do care and a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll showed that 74 percent of Americans want to see his tax returns.
The main problem with Trump’s refusal to release his most recent tax returns is that there is no way we can find out just how far in bed he is with the Russian oligarchs (if at all) without seeing them.
And Democrats are now saying they will not cooperate with Trump’s plans to enact tax reforms because, after all, how can they judge whether those reforms would likely benefit him personally if they can’t see his taxes.
Government figures are not being released, but some news sources estimate it costs the taxpayers about $3 million every time Trump and his family go to Mar-a-Lago for the weekend.
If that figure is accurate, it takes 600 taxpayers paying an average of $5,000 each to pay for one of those trips, which he has already taken eight or nine times in his first 90 days as president.
It took the taxes of 20 average taxpayers at $5,000 each to pay for the $100,000 in hotel rooms and security costs for Eric Trump to go to Uruguay a few months ago to conduct private Trump Inc. business. And the Trump brothers had a similarly costly business trip to Vancouver around the same time.
We pay taxes to protect them while they enrich themselves.
Trump’s people defend his Mar-a-Lago weekends because he conducts some official business there (see Chinese and Japanese premiers), but he could conduct that business just as well in Washington.
Each time Trump goes to the “Southern White House” he gets to charge the government rent for housing his Secret Service protection and he gets to disrupt the lives of all his neighbors.
His visits cost Palm Beach taxpayers about $60,000 a day while the estimated cost of New York City to protect the president’s family at the Trump Tower is estimated at $500,000 a day.
Whatever the costs, we or local taxpayers will pay them.
After Trump was elected, he doubled the annual membership fee at Mar-a-Lago to $200,000 a year, capitalizing not only on his name but on his new position.
His wealthy members now have the privilege of being seen on the same golf course or in the same dining room with him, perhaps playing in the same foursome.
In other words, he gets to enrich himself and his golf club members get to buy influence, just as wealthy foreigners are buying influence by staying in his Washington hotel, where, coincidentally, room rates have soared as well.
And the taxpayers are not allowed to even know who those influence buyers are.