Thread by @smbrnsn

Okay, just one thought tonight on #TrumpTaxReturns: beware of too-facile conclusions because they're probably wrong.

Here, for instance: it's clearly possible @realDonaldTrump inflated assets and revenues on bank documents for loan purposes. But it's also possible he didn't. 1/

https://twitter.com/davidaxelrod/status/1310340000429481985

For instance, the fact that he had tax losses doesn't tell us anything about his revenue. In fact, the @nytimes article points out that his businesses had revenue. In 2018, he disclosed $435m in revenue but claimed a tax loss of $47m. 2/

The thing is, that's not unusual. Revenue is the gross amount of money you bring in. But you reduce revenue by certain expenses. So even for financial accounting purposes, it's possible to have eyepopping amounts of revenue with net losses.

Remember @uber? 3/

In the second quarter of this year, it apparently had $2.24b of revenue and a net loss of $1.78b. 4/ techcrunch.com/2020/08/06/ube…

It's also important to keep in mind that financial accounting differs from tax accounting. Put simply, the financial information you give to a lender or investor will look different from what you send to the IRS because the rules and conventions differ.

Should they? 5/

That's a hard question to answer in a tweet-storm.

So I'm going to avoid it for now.

Based on the Times's reporting, there certainly are troubling things about the way Trump has paid (or, more specifically, not paid) his taxes. 6/

And a lot of smart people (also me) are going to be looking at this information (and, hopefully, if the @nytimes ever makes it public, the returns themselves) to try to make sense of what's going on. But anybody who tells you, tonight, with unearned certainty 7/

that one thing or another constitutes fraud or illegality or whatever is probably speaking beyond their expertise. Tax law is complicated, it's nuanced, and it's not really the province of hot takes.

So tune in soon for some not-terribly-hot takes on #TrumpTaxReturns. 8/8