Donald J. Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes the year he won the presidency. In his first year in the White House, he paid another $750.
He had paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years — largely because he reported losing much more money than he made.
Trump is beset by losses & hundreds of millions of dollars in debt coming due that he personally guaranteed. Also a decade-long audit battle with IRS over $72.9 mil. tax refund he claimed, and received, after declaring huge losses. An adverse ruling could cost him over $100 mil.
The tax returns Trump has long fought to keep private tell a story fundamentally different from one he has sold to the public. His reports to I.R.S. portray a businessman who takes in hundreds of millions of dollars a year yet racks up chronic losses he uses to avoid paying taxes
Now, with his financial challenges mounting, the records show that he depends more and more on making money from businesses that put him in potential and often direct conflict of interest with his job as president.
🚨 This article offers an overview of The Times’s findings; additional articles will be published in the coming weeks.
The data examined provides a road map of revelations, from write-offs for the cost of a 🚨criminal defense lawyer & a mansion used as a family retreat to a full accounting of the millions of dollars the president received from the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in 🚨Moscow.
👏🏽 Ultimately, Mr. Trump has been more successful playing a business mogul than being one in real life.👏🏽
The Apprentice, licensing & endorsement deals brought Trump $427.4 million. He invested much in businesses, mostly golf courses, that have steadily devoured cash, much as money he secretly received from his father financed a spree of overspending that led to his collapse in ‘90s
Indeed, his financial condition when he announced his run for president in 2015 lends some credence to the notion that his long-shot campaign was at least in part a gambit to reanimate the marketability of his name.
In 2018, for example, Mr. Trump announced in his disclosure that he had made at least $434.9 million. The tax records deliver a very different portrait of his bottom line: $47.4 million in losses.
The picture from figures & tax schedules prepared by Trump’s accountants is of a businessman-president in a tightening financial vise. Most of Trump’s core enterprises, from his golf courses to his hotel in Washington, report losing tens of millions of dollars year after year.
His revenue from The Apprentice & licensing deals is drying up & he sold nearly all stocks that might help plug holes in his struggling properties.The tax audit looms;within the next four years, more than $300 million in loans for which he is personally responsible will come due.
The records reveal conflicts of interest created by Trump’s refusal to divest himself of businesses while in office. His properties have become bazaars for collecting money directly from lobbyists, foreign officials & others seeking favors.
He reported paying taxes, in turn, on a number of his overseas ventures. In 2017, the president’s $750 contribution to the operations of the U.S. government was dwarfed by the $15,598 he or his companies paid in Panama, the $145,400 in India and the $156,824 in the Philippines.
Records show the Miss Universe pageant in Russia generated a personal payday of $2.3 million, made possible by the Agalarov family, who later helped set up the 2016 meeting between Trump campaign officials seeking “dirt” on Mrs. Clinton & a Russian lawyer connected to the Kremlin
If the auditors ultimately disallow Trump’s $72.9 million federal refund, he will be forced to return that money with interest, and possibly penalties, a total that could exceed $100 million. He could also be ordered to return the state and local refunds based on the same claims.
Trump’s conflicts are most evident with Turkey. When relations were at a low Turkey canceled a conference at Trump’s hotel;6 months later the rescheduled event was attended by Turkish government officials & Turkish Airlines chose Trump National Golf Club in Virginia for an event.
Donald Jr., Eric, Ivanka are employee of Trump Organization & Ivanka is an executive officer for more than 200 Trump companies. The records show the siblings had each drawn a salary from their father’s company of $480,000 a year, jumping to 2 million after Trump became president
Trump has said the children were intimately involved in negotiating and managing his projects. When asked in a 2011 lawsuit deposition whom he relied on to handle important details of his licensing deals, he named only Ivanka, Donald Jr. and Eric.
The records suggest other ways in which Trump’s presidency propped up his sagging bottom line. Monthly credit card receipts reflect the way certain of his resorts, golf courses and hotels became favored stamping grounds, if not venues for influence-trading, beginning in 2015.
At the hotel receipts grew from $3.7 mil/mo in Dec 2016, to $5.4 mil in Jan 2017 & $6 mil by May 2018. At Doral, after Trump declared his candidacy in June 2015, credit card revenue more than doubled, to $13 mil, for 3 months through August, compared with same period year before.
He is personally responsible for loans and other debts totaling $421 million, with most of it coming due within four years. Should he win re-election, his lenders could be placed in the unprecedented position of weighing whether to foreclose on a sitting president.
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