Perhaps the most important thing that will come out of this, and why American oligarchs have supported Trump in his resistance, will be the extent of ways rich ppl have to legally avoid paying taxes in the US.
We've already seen that in two recent years, Trump legally avoided paying ANY tax. I'm guessing everyone commenting here paid more income tax those years that our "billionaire" ex president.
The struggle will continue. Money attracts money and the monied interests, with their wealth and resultant power, will exert maximum political pressure and increased financial support for supportive lawmakers in their efforts to insure their special interests and wealth are protected.
It has been said the two greatest problems facing humankind is ignorance and greed. The wealthiest 1-2 percent of Americans are shining examples of that truth. And they will work very hard to preserve that top 1-2 percent class distinction for themselves.
It seems the more things change the more they stay the same. It is very hard to not be cynical in America today. With the wealth in America this country and all its people could have better lives were the wealth be more evenly and fairly distributed across society.
But, this is America. Where individualism and self interest is the highest value. We've been conditioned for so long to believe this that it will be very difficult, if not near impossible to change it. One is likely certain. It won't change in our lifetimes.
I'm conflicted by this. While I somewhat agree with Jennifer Rubin from the Washington Post who pleaded to not release the taxes as it would just be more fodder for trump and his cult to claim another witch hunt, trump IS a candidate for the nomination of President in 2024 and I believe the public has a right to know who he is beholden to, if anyone (or any country).
Poor Donnie. If he would have just kept his massive ego in check and NOT run for President in 2016, he could still be grifting and shafting people right and left, flying under the radar like he had for years with no consequences.
Possum... let's remember that all through the Trump Admin, he claimed he was under audit and as such, unable to release his tax returns.
We now know he was lying. Each and every time he said that.
Treasury Sec Mnuchin never ordered the customary presidential tax audits all previous presidents since Nixon had on their taxes.
We also now know that unlike you and me, there were years he paid no income taxes. In addition to his apparently "losing" tons of money in boom years. Maybe his claim to fame should be as a genius at avoiding taxes while knowing nothing about actually running a business effectively.
I'm a firm believer in the power of sunshine and transparency to work as a cleansing agent. I too saw the Rubin piece and while I disagree with her conclusion, she made some good points.
I just think the extraordinary issues with Trump require extraordinary measures in dealing with them.
So as more comes out publicly about Trump and his taxes, where do we begin?
IRS rules require all sitting presidents to have their tax returns audited annually to help give confidence to the American people that presidents are not cheating. These rules were instituted after VP Agnew was found to cheated on his taxes and in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal of the Nixon Admin.
All president since then have complied, as has IRS leadership. Until the Trump Admin.
We now know that Trump's 2017 and 2018 taxes were never audited. We know that the 2019 audit, still uncompleted, was not started until the day Democratic House leader Neal subpoenaed Trump's taxes in order for the House to determine if the IRS rules requiring presidential audits were being followed.
As the leader of the committee charged with oversight of the IRS, Neal was clearly within the law, as the SCOTUS later ruled, to make such a request. It is interesting that the IRS, headed at the time by a California lawyer who had written opinion pieces arguing that Trump should not release his taxes, started the 2019 audit on that day.
As many conservatives have said for years... if you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear. So why would Trump for years say, untruthfully, that he was under audit, when he wasn't, and ultimately refuse to release his taxes?
Because the big fish have the money and influence. That, and the big fish have been able to hoodwink enough people into believing the trickledown economics was good for them too.
Trump refused to release his taxes during his first campaign and lied that he couldn't release his returns because of an audit which, in fact, wasn't underway.
- He took deductions without substantiation
- He personally signed checks for Trump Corp to pay for private school tuition for Weisselberg's grandchildren to avoid taxes.
They may be more facts to come, but these are enough to judge the man.
Donald J. Trump will go down in history as America's most corrupt president.
I don't see any way he can get the nomination, unless the current GOP wants all the world and history to know that they are proudly the party of Crooks and Liars.
This is what Trump is (and his supporters refuse to see it):
"Back in 2016 Michael Bloomberg spoke the truth when said that Trump was a con artist.
In his life he's lurched from one scam to the next, one grift to another. He is in fact, a career criminal, masking first as a businessman, second as a politician.
Look closely at Trump and you'll see the swindles, the cons, the fraud, and the outright theft. He's built his entire life around bilking others and thumbing his nose at the law.
His business ventures usually are elaborate schemes designed to mulct funds from the rubes:
*Trump Airlines, *the New York Generals football team, *Trump Steaks, *Trump Vodka, *Trump University, *his two Atlantic City casinos.
One flimflam after another, grift piled onto grift. His political career has mirrored his business career, with fundraising atop fundraising, all intended to con the gullible.
So we shouldn't be shocked at Trump's tawdry tax scams. What should shock us is that Trump has gotten away with grift and fraud and cons for decade after decade."
Are they going to find anything illegal in his tax return that were prepared by a host of accountants or did he just follow the tax code which few understand. A fair tax system would significantly reduce the complication of taxes so the rich have to pay "their fair share" and this is the reason congress will never implement it because they are part of the 1% who would get hurt. Congress to view trumps returns is nothing but future fodder for them. They will have their staff or accountants go through them and pick out what is good dirt because the majority of them have no idea what a tax return looks like and certainly don't understand our ridiculous tax code.
Hiring an additional 80+ thousand will allow the IRS to go deeper into peoples taxes and make sure the family of four making 80k a year is paying Their Fair Share. Hopefully they will take a good look at charities, churches and other sketchy groups who don't pay their fair share. Maybe they could use some of this time to come up with a comprehensive immigration policy and deal with the 2 million invited border crosser's.
As usual, you miss the entire point of releasing Trump's taxes.
You left out the part about Trump not paying any federal taxes in 2020 and not having a mandatory Internal Revenue Service audit for his first two years in the White House. Maybe that's because he put his capos in charge of Treasury and the IRS.
Why would an honest president NOT have his taxes audited? Wouldn't the American people want to know if he's engaged in questionable practices regarding his taxes?
You sound like you're making excuses for this guy. The same guy who's cheated and lied his entire life. And the Republican Party in 2016 decided that this cheater and liar would make an excellent POTUS and role model for all Americans.
Yes, the tax code needs an overhaul to make it more equitable. I pay taxes and the fake billionaire doesn't?
This is just another example of the Spenglerian slide into decay for our country.
Elect a crook for the presidency and expect corruption to be his modus operandi throughout his administration.
I'm not sure America will ever recover from what this disastrous conman did to our country.
Shaw - if by recover you mean go back to what we did before, then I hope we never recover. When we know better we do better. (Pretty sure that’s not what you meant but I’m insane literal today).
I want the USA to take what has happened as an opportunity to audit all the things. I want our laws scoured for language which supports systemic racism and financial loopholes. I want the Social Security Amin to face the mother of all audits as I’m certain there is a better way to take care of our disabled, elderly, and sick populations. And while I’m making my Christmas Wish list I’d love to discover some method of keeping self serving politicians from ever holding office again. Humans are elected to represent everyone, not just those who voted for them or donated money.
I am beyond tired of humans who swear an oath on their deities holy book and then without consequence breaking that oath.
These are wishes only, I’ve had so much hope in the past only for those I believed in to succumb to greed. I used to blame the system. Now? Not so much. The system is a tool, nothing more. The good or bad comes from the people using it.
Ms, Shaw, As usual you make this about trump and how horrible he is and I understand that everything is about trump. I remember when the kennedy dynasty paid no taxes, how about the global climate czar jonnie, or bezos or all the other gazillionaires. The tax code favors the rich and ignores the poor because they are not allowed to pay their fair share. It will not change because the rich control the country and congress are made up of rich people who benefit from the current code.
Why isn't there an uproar on the latest 1.7 trillion dollar money grab. Hiking trail named for muchelle, salmon restocking, bee friendly highway, gender studies. Where is the call to stop welfare for the rich by having student loans paid back because that affects the rich. I am not against giving money for college tuition as long as it is retroactive to 1970. No this tax record push is nothing but a means to embarrass trump. Congress is always to spend our money and buy off who ever they need to stay in power. The republicans are just as guilty with this as the democrats but you can continue to blame trump because what else do the democrats have to go on.
ray, let's not overlook thousands of dollars that he reportedly gave to charitable causes. Now, for you and me as the average citizen, we've got to have receipts, or it is an unsupported deduction, illegal under IRS law.
And, if he gave cash to a 501(c)3 charity, a must to get those income reducing deductions, that charity would have a record of those donations. We already know from prior experience that Trump's statements about donations to charitable causes seem to lack a certain level of veracity.
But absent either of those options as backup, he has made fraudulent claims, a crime under the law.
Pointing out "the worst of ourselves" is neccessary if we want to remain a civil and functioning society. Especially when "the worst of ourselves" just happens to be wealthy, egregiously dishonest, AND, president of the most powerful nation on earth.
When the stench of corruption is as odious and pervasive as that of Trump and his administration it MUST be addressed if we are to remain a decent and stable country.
Trump was a clown his entire life. Everybody knows that. He, however happened to enable so much for so many other people around him who do not like to look so shameless. In this last episode he was an accidental president, but happened to be in the right place at the right time to trigger an unexpected cult movement.
Trump opened the flood gates to extremists and corrupted the US government forever opening a deep fault life in US politics and civil life by attempting an unimaginable coup. He may never get get elected again and disappear from political life in disgrace but his impact on US politics I am afraid will continue to unravel events that otherwise would be very unlikely.
@Fed Up... your premise holds true ONLY if the American people decide it is so. IOW, if the majority of decent and honorable folks in America decide, oh well, nothing i can do it will happen. In a nutshell it's up to us what happens going forward.
21 comments:
For better, or worse.
Perhaps the most important thing that will come out of this, and why American oligarchs have supported Trump in his resistance, will be the extent of ways rich ppl have to legally avoid paying taxes in the US.
We've already seen that in two recent years, Trump legally avoided paying ANY tax. I'm guessing everyone commenting here paid more income tax those years that our "billionaire" ex president.
The struggle will continue. Money attracts money and the monied interests, with their wealth and resultant power, will exert maximum political pressure and increased financial support for supportive lawmakers in their efforts to insure their special interests and wealth are protected.
It has been said the two greatest problems facing humankind is ignorance and greed. The wealthiest 1-2 percent of Americans are shining examples of that truth. And they will work very hard to preserve that top 1-2 percent class distinction for themselves.
It seems the more things change the more they stay the same. It is very hard to not be cynical in America today. With the wealth in America this country and all its people could have better lives were the wealth be more evenly and fairly distributed across society.
But, this is America. Where individualism and self interest is the highest value. We've been conditioned for so long to believe this that it will be very difficult, if not near impossible to change it. One is likely certain. It won't change in our lifetimes.
I'm conflicted by this. While I somewhat agree with Jennifer Rubin from the Washington Post who pleaded to not release the taxes as it would just be more fodder for trump and his cult to claim another witch hunt, trump IS a candidate for the nomination of President in 2024 and I believe the public has a right to know who he is beholden to, if anyone (or any country).
Poor Donnie. If he would have just kept his massive ego in check and NOT run for President in 2016, he could still be grifting and shafting people right and left, flying under the radar like he had for years with no consequences.
Possum... let's remember that all through the Trump Admin, he claimed he was under audit and as such, unable to release his tax returns.
We now know he was lying. Each and every time he said that.
Treasury Sec Mnuchin never ordered the customary presidential tax audits all previous presidents since Nixon had on their taxes.
We also now know that unlike you and me, there were years he paid no income taxes. In addition to his apparently "losing" tons of money in boom years. Maybe his claim to fame should be as a genius at avoiding taxes while knowing nothing about actually running a business effectively.
I'm a firm believer in the power of sunshine and transparency to work as a cleansing agent. I too saw the Rubin piece and while I disagree with her conclusion, she made some good points.
I just think the extraordinary issues with Trump require extraordinary measures in dealing with them.
So as more comes out publicly about Trump and his taxes, where do we begin?
IRS rules require all sitting presidents to have their tax returns audited annually to help give confidence to the American people that presidents are not cheating. These rules were instituted after VP Agnew was found to cheated on his taxes and in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal of the Nixon Admin.
All president since then have complied, as has IRS leadership. Until the Trump Admin.
We now know that Trump's 2017 and 2018 taxes were never audited. We know that the 2019 audit, still uncompleted, was not started until the day Democratic House leader Neal subpoenaed Trump's taxes in order for the House to determine if the IRS rules requiring presidential audits were being followed.
As the leader of the committee charged with oversight of the IRS, Neal was clearly within the law, as the SCOTUS later ruled, to make such a request. It is interesting that the IRS, headed at the time by a California lawyer who had written opinion pieces arguing that Trump should not release his taxes, started the 2019 audit on that day.
As many conservatives have said for years... if you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear. So why would Trump for years say, untruthfully, that he was under audit, when he wasn't, and ultimately refuse to release his taxes?
Further as more and more news comes out...
$100,000,000 in reported one year and President Trump paid, wait for it, $750.00 in federal income taxes.
When the IRS finally got around to auditing one return, they assigned 1 agent.
This is why we need more IRS agents. Not to go after Joe the Plumber or Sally Sixpack, but to make sure the big fish are paying their fair share.
Why is this so contentious?
Because the big fish have the money and influence. That, and the big fish have been able to hoodwink enough people into believing the trickledown economics was good for them too.
In a word, gullibility.
Dave M., Possumlady, Les,
Trump refused to release his taxes during his first campaign and lied that he couldn't release his returns because of an audit which, in fact, wasn't underway.
- He took deductions without substantiation
- He personally signed checks for Trump Corp to pay for private school tuition for Weisselberg's grandchildren to avoid taxes.
They may be more facts to come, but these are enough to judge the man.
Donald J. Trump will go down in history as America's most corrupt president.
I don't see any way he can get the nomination, unless the current GOP wants all the world and history to know that they are proudly the party of Crooks and Liars.
This is what Trump is (and his supporters refuse to see it):
"Back in 2016 Michael Bloomberg spoke the truth when said that Trump was a con artist.
In his life he's lurched from one scam to the next, one grift to another. He is in fact, a career criminal, masking first as a businessman, second as a politician.
Look closely at Trump and you'll see the swindles, the cons, the fraud, and the outright theft. He's built his entire life around bilking others and thumbing his nose at the law.
His business ventures usually are elaborate schemes designed to mulct funds from the rubes:
*Trump Airlines,
*the New York Generals football team,
*Trump Steaks,
*Trump Vodka,
*Trump University,
*his two Atlantic City casinos.
One flimflam after another, grift piled onto grift. His political career has mirrored his business career, with fundraising atop fundraising, all intended to con the gullible.
So we shouldn't be shocked at Trump's tawdry tax scams. What should shock us is that Trump has gotten away with grift and fraud and cons for decade after decade."
Are they going to find anything illegal in his tax return that were prepared by a host of accountants or did he just follow the tax code which few understand. A fair tax system would significantly reduce the complication of taxes so the rich have to pay "their fair share" and this is the reason congress will never implement it because they are part of the 1% who would get hurt. Congress to view trumps returns is nothing but future fodder for them. They will have their staff or accountants go through them and pick out what is good dirt because the majority of them have no idea what a tax return looks like and certainly don't understand our ridiculous tax code.
Hiring an additional 80+ thousand will allow the IRS to go deeper into peoples taxes and make sure the family of four making 80k a year is paying Their Fair Share. Hopefully they will take a good look at charities, churches and other sketchy groups who don't pay their fair share. Maybe they could use some of this time to come up with a comprehensive immigration policy and deal with the 2 million invited border crosser's.
As usual, you miss the entire point of releasing Trump's taxes.
You left out the part about Trump not paying any federal taxes in 2020 and not having a mandatory Internal Revenue Service audit for his first two years in the White House. Maybe that's because he put his capos in charge of Treasury and the IRS.
Why would an honest president NOT have his taxes audited? Wouldn't the American people want to know if he's engaged in questionable practices regarding his taxes?
You sound like you're making excuses for this guy. The same guy who's cheated and lied his entire life. And the Republican Party in 2016 decided that this cheater and liar would make an excellent POTUS and role model for all Americans.
Yes, the tax code needs an overhaul to make it more equitable. I pay taxes and the fake billionaire doesn't?
This is just another example of the Spenglerian slide into decay for our country.
Elect a crook for the presidency and expect corruption to be his modus operandi throughout his administration.
I'm not sure America will ever recover from what this disastrous conman did to our country.
To skud et al:
Trump lied to America and said he was being audited when he wasn’t.
Trump had to shut down a fraudulent charity and a fake university.
Trump's company in New York was convicted of tax code violations.
Trump conspired with his lawyer to pay illegal hush money payments to mistresses for which his lawyer went to prison.
I don’t need to know anything else about him to know that he is a crook.
Shaw - if by recover you mean go back to what we did before, then I hope we never recover. When we know better we do better. (Pretty sure that’s not what you meant but I’m insane literal today).
I want the USA to take what has happened as an opportunity to audit all the things. I want our laws scoured for language which supports systemic racism and financial loopholes. I want the Social Security Amin to face the mother of all audits as I’m certain there is a better way to take care of our disabled, elderly, and sick populations. And while I’m making my Christmas Wish list I’d love to discover some method of keeping self serving politicians from ever holding office again. Humans are elected to represent everyone, not just those who voted for them or donated money.
I am beyond tired of humans who swear an oath on their deities holy book and then without consequence breaking that oath.
These are wishes only, I’ve had so much hope in the past only for those I believed in to succumb to greed. I used to blame the system. Now? Not so much. The system is a tool, nothing more. The good or bad comes from the people using it.
Grey One Talks Sass on their phone
Ms, Shaw, As usual you make this about trump and how horrible he is and I understand that everything is about trump. I remember when the kennedy dynasty paid no taxes, how about the global climate czar jonnie, or bezos or all the other gazillionaires. The tax code favors the rich and ignores the poor because they are not allowed to pay their fair share. It will not change because the rich control the country and congress are made up of rich people who benefit from the current code.
Why isn't there an uproar on the latest 1.7 trillion dollar money grab. Hiking trail named for muchelle, salmon restocking, bee friendly highway, gender studies. Where is the call to stop welfare for the rich by having student loans paid back because that affects the rich. I am not against giving money for college tuition as long as it is retroactive to 1970. No this tax record push is nothing but a means to embarrass trump. Congress is always to spend our money and buy off who ever they need to stay in power. The republicans are just as guilty with this as the democrats but you can continue to blame trump because what else do the democrats have to go on.
ray, let's not overlook thousands of dollars that he reportedly gave to charitable causes. Now, for you and me as the average citizen, we've got to have receipts, or it is an unsupported deduction, illegal under IRS law.
And, if he gave cash to a 501(c)3 charity, a must to get those income reducing deductions, that charity would have a record of those donations. We already know from prior experience that Trump's statements about donations to charitable causes seem to lack a certain level of veracity.
But absent either of those options as backup, he has made fraudulent claims, a crime under the law.
Will it matter? Not at all.
skud "Ms, Shaw, As usual you make this about trump and how horrible he is and I understand that everything is about trump."
Everything IS about Trump, skud, because he wants to be POTUS again! Haven't you heard?
Presidential scholars will be writing about Trump for years to come because he is the absolute worst to have ever defiled the Oval Office.
So it turns out that not only is trump not a billionaire, but he also lied about donating his salary. Is anyone surprised?
So we put priority on highlighting the worst of ourselves?
Pointing out "the worst of ourselves" is neccessary if we want to remain a civil and functioning society. Especially when "the worst of ourselves" just happens to be wealthy, egregiously dishonest, AND, president of the most powerful nation on earth.
When the stench of corruption is as odious and pervasive as that of Trump and his administration it MUST be addressed if we are to remain a decent and stable country.
Mental health 101 insists one face their past, the good, bad, and ugly parts, before any healing can occur.
It is when we acknowledge that we could have done better that we see the path to doing better.
Sounds so easy, amirite? And yet this path I’ve been on for over seven years is harder than any I previously walked.
When I knew better I did better.
Grey One Talks Sass on my cell phone.
Trump was a clown his entire life. Everybody knows that. He, however happened to enable so much for so many other people around him who do not like to look so shameless. In this last episode he was an accidental president, but happened to be in the right place at the right time to trigger an unexpected cult movement.
Trump opened the flood gates to extremists and corrupted the US government forever opening a deep fault life in US politics and civil life by attempting an unimaginable coup. He may never get get elected again and disappear from political life in disgrace but his impact on US politics I am afraid will continue to unravel events that otherwise would be very unlikely.
Now smarter clowns will follow his precedent.
@Fed Up... your premise holds true ONLY if the American people decide it is so. IOW, if the majority of decent and honorable folks in America decide, oh well, nothing i can do it will happen. In a nutshell it's up to us what happens going forward.
I, like you, am not optimistic.
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