Former President Donald Trump paid no taxes in his final year in office and even reported losses from his business interests, according to tax data released by a US Congressional panel.
Donald Trump paid no income tax during the last full year of his presidency as he reported losses from his vast business interests, according to tax data released by a congressional panel.
Records released late Tuesday after a year-long battle by the Democratic-led House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee show that Trump's income and his tax liability rose dramatically during his four years in the White House. There were ups and downs.
Records rattled against the Republican former president's longstanding image as a successful businessman as he made another bid for the White House.
The documents show that Trump and his wife, Melania, paid some form of tax during all four years, but were able to lower their income taxes in several years because of the income deduction and losses from Trump's businesses. was more than
The committee questioned the legality of some of those deductions, including one for $916 million, and members said Tuesday that the tax return was short on details. The panel is expected to issue revised versions of their full returns in the coming days.
Trump refused to make his tax returns public during his two presidential bids and his campaign for office, even though all other major party presidential candidates have done so for decades.
The committee obtained the records after a years-long battle and voted Tuesday to make them public.
A Trump spokesman said the release of the documents was politically motivated.
"If this injustice can happen to President Trump, it can happen to all Americans," Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump Organization, said on Wednesday.
Democrats on the panel said their review found that tax officials did not properly check Trump's complex tax returns to ensure accuracy.
Although the US Internal Revenue Service is required to audit the tax returns of presidents every year, it did not do so until Democrats pressed for action in 2019.
The IRS assigned only one agent to audit most of the time, the panel found, and did not investigate some of the deductions claimed by Trump.
The IRS declined to comment.
Prior to taking office, Trump reported huge losses for several years to offset hundreds of millions of dollars in income from his businesses, according to media reports and trial testimony about his finances.
Documents released by the committee show that the pattern continued during his time in the White House.
During that time, Trump and his wife were liable for self-employment and household employment taxes. As a result, he paid a total of $3 million in taxes over those four years.
But the deductions enabled him to reduce his income tax liability over several years.
In 2017, Trump and his wife reported negative gross income of $12.9 million, leaving a net income tax of $750, records showed.
He reported an adjusted gross income of $24.3 million in 2018 and paid net taxes of $1 million, while in 2019 he reported income of $4.4 million in 2019 and paid $134,000 in taxes.
In 2020, he reported a loss of $4.8 million and owed no net income tax.
No comments:
Post a Comment