Trump is good at losing money If it wasn’t obvious before, The New York Times has made it painstakingly clear why Donald Trump has repeatedly defied longtime precedent and refused to release his federal income tax returns: They paint a much different image of the real estate tycoon than the one Trump has carefully tried to cultivate in the business, entertainment and political worlds. According to the Times, which says it legally obtained more than two decades of Trump’s tax returns, the president’s greatest business success has not been at developing hotels, casinos and golf courses but at avoiding taxes. For 10 of the 15 years before he became president, Trump paid no taxes. The first year he was president, he forked out all of $750, about one-sixteenth of what the average American pays. The same was his tax bill the next year, the latest for which the Times had figures. It is hardly a shocker that a wealthy businessman can avoid paying taxes. The federal tax code is full of breaks that allow many of the largest corporations and the wealthiest Americans to shirk income taxes. The loopholes are especially plentiful in the real estate development arena. What is damaging to Trump’s persona is that most of the tax breaks he has enjoyed are based on his huge failures as a businessman. What reportedly brought his taxes down to zero or near zero all of those years were the gargantuan losses he suffered. According to the Times, Trump has lost more than $315 million on his golf courses since 2000. His controversial Washington hotel, which opened the year he won the presidency, has lost another $55 million. Such a track record is consistent with the multiple bankruptcies in his business past. None of this says much for the argument that Trump has brought a businessman’s approach to running Washington. It may say something about how Trump, even before the pandemic, was presiding over some of the largest deficits in U.S. history. The man apparently knows how to spend money quite well, but not necessarily how to cover those expenses. It should be particularly troubling that the vise on Trump’s financial condition could be severely squeezed in the next few years. According to the Times, Trump is personally liable for more than $400 million in debt, the bulk of which will come due during his second term, should he win reelection. There’s also hanging over his head a long-running IRS audit of aggressive accounting maneuvers that produced a $72.9 million tax refund, which he could be forced to pay back plus another $30 million or so in interest and penalties. With those kinds of bills coming due, Trump makes himself vulnerable to being coerced into pushing government policies or granting other favors to those whom he owes or who are willing to secretly vouch for the money. None of the tax disclosures, however, may impact the election that is just five weeks away. Trump has been able to survive other revelations that would torpedo most politicians. His base of conservative support either doesn’t believe the mountain of detrimental reports about him, doesn’t care, or has decided that his flaws, while troubling, are an acceptable trade-off as long as he pushes the initiatives of which they approve. The tax story does, though, give Trump and his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, one more serious thing to talk about when they hold their first debate Tuesday night. Not that they needed more material, what with the pandemic still dreadfully active, the economy weak in recovery, racial and civil unrest abundant, and the Senate poised to rush through one more Trump appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. This may not be the most pivotal election in our lifetimes, as both sides like to say, but it definitely will go down as one of the most interesting. Tim Kalich Editor and Publisher Greenwood Commonwealth
