Combing through Trump's tax returns

Former President Trump’s seven-year battle to keep the public from seeing his taxes ended in defeat Friday as [the House Ways and Means Committee] released six years of returns documenting his aggressive efforts to minimize what he paid the Internal Revenue Service.

[...]

The new disclosures do not fundamentally change what was already known about Trump’s finances — that he’s relied heavily on inherited wealth to offset a string of businesses that consistently lose money, that he’s used those losses to wipe out most of his tax liability for years, that many of his claims have stretched the law and perhaps broken it.

[...]

Trump and his wife, Melania, paid $750 or less in federal income tax in 2016 and 2017. The couple paid zero taxes in 2020 and claimed a $5.5-million refund.

[...]

In three other years, Trump paid significant amounts. As a share of his income, however, his payments were far below those of the average taxpayer.

[...]

The 2018 payment came on reported adjusted gross income of $24.3 million — an effective tax rate of 4%. By contrast, the average taxpayer in 2018 paid $15,322 in federal income taxes, with an average rate of about 13%, according to the IRS.

[...]

Trump’s golf courses in the U.S. and Scotland have been consistent money losers, the returns show. His hotel properties, by contrast, were very profitable in 2017, the first year of his presidency, but experienced large losses in 2020, thanks at least in part to the COVID-19 pandemic, which devastated the hospitality industry.

One major offset to those losses involved foreign income. In 2017, Trump’s gross income from foreign sources totaled $55.4 million. That included $6.5 million from business in China, where he made a state visit that year. He had reported no income from China in 2016. The 2017 return also shows $5.7 million in income from India. Most of the rest of the foreign income that year came from Canada.

[...]

“His tax returns seem to confirm that he did in fact earn millions from countries about which he had to regularly make important decisions as president.”

The returns do not disclose any obviously nefarious sources of income — contrary to speculation over the years by some of Trump’s opponents.

[...]

In 2017, the year Trump paid a net tax of $750, his return shows he took $7.4 million in tax credits, which completely erased what he otherwise would have owed. Some of those tax credits were apparently for renovating the Trump International Hotel in Washington, which he sold after leaving office. Tax law provides for credit for investments in historic properties and for certain poor communities, but the IRS has not yet determined whether Trump’s claims were valid.

The tax returns show a number of other cases, small and large, that were flagged by congressional staff. In one schedule for the 2015 tax year, Trump reported a $50,000 speaking fee that was almost entirely offset by $46,162 in claimed travel expenses.

Repeatedly, Trump’s returns show businesses where the reported income precisely matches reported expenses.

[...]

[I]n 2020, Trump appears to have broken his pledge to donate his $400,000 annual presidential salary to charity.

  LA Times

What a fucking surprise.

[H]is 2020 return shows zero charitable contributions. His 2018 and 2019 returns reported charitable contributions of just over $500,000. In 2017, he reported giving $1.9 million to charity. In a report on Trump’s taxes, the committee noted that Trump provided little documentation to back up those claimed contributions, a red flag.

[...]

Since 1977, the IRS has had a stated policy of mandatory audits of the tax returns of presidents and vice presidents. But in obtaining Trump’s returns, House Democrats discovered that during the first two years of Trump’s term, the IRS had not audited the president.

And we found out why.

Trump’s returns remain under audit, and the IRS has not resolved some questions that pre-date his presidency. If the agency rules against Trump, he could face millions of dollars in additional tax liability.

[...]

During the years in which Trump battled disclosure, much of the information he sought to keep secret about his pre-presidential finances became public anyway, largely from a 2020 New York Times investigation.

The picture that emerged showed that for all Trump’s claims to be a great businessman, his core enterprises — a sprawling network of hotels, golf courses and other properties — have lost millions of dollars year after year.

“He’s a staggering loser,” said Steven M. Rosenthal, a senior fellow in the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, a think tank.

Amen to that. 

The former president was known for fusing his business interests with America’s highest public office, drawing allegations of using his role to promote his private resorts, direct federal money to his hotels and encourage foreign governments to spend money that would directly benefit the Trump family interests.

His far-flung concerns, foreign and domestic, are nested in more than 400 separate business entities. A 2019 report by the watchdog group OpenSecrets said he had more than $130 million in assets in more than 30 countries.

[...]

It’s not a surprise that Trump continued to receive money from foreign interests while he was president. While he handed over day-to-day operation of his business empire to his children, he still kept ownership.

Trump’s sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, made deals around the globe while their father was president.

  Politico

UPDATE:

Mr. Trump’s history of inheriting wealth and then losing it was chronicled by The New York Times in 2020, when it obtained decades of Mr. Trump’s tax information, including much of which was disclosed on Friday.

  MaddowBlog

UPDATE: Let's look back...

I hope his head explodes soon

Judge rules Trump tax returns must be turned over to House committee

A federal judge has ruled that former President Donald Trump’s accountants must turn over two years’ worth of his tax and financial records to a House committee investigating whether Trump and his businesses profited from his service in the White House.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta on Wednesday approved a House Oversight Committee subpoena for Trump’s records covering 2017 and 2018, but turned down most of the panel’s request for similar information dating back to 2011.

  Politico

Don't look for Trump to just hand them over.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

One baby step

The US Department of Justice on Friday ordered the Internal Revenue Service to hand Donald Trump’s tax returns to a House committee, saying the panel had “invoked sufficient reasons” for requesting them.

The news was a second blow for Trump in a matter of hours, after released DoJ memos revealed that as part of his campaign to overturn his election defeat by Joe Biden, he pressured top officials to falsely label the 2020 election as corrupt, then “leave the rest to me”.

[...]

“Access to former President Trump’s tax returns is a matter of national security. The American people deserve to know the facts of his troubling conflicts of interest and undermining of our security and democracy as president.” [-- Nancy Pelosi]

[...]

Bill Pascrell, a New Jersey Democrat who chairs the House ways and means subcommittee on oversight, said: “It is about damn time. Our committee first sought Donald Trump’s tax returns on 3 April 2019 – 849 days ago. Our request was made in full accordance with the law and pursuant to Congress’s constitutional oversight powers.”

[...]

Michael Stern, a former senior counsel for the House Office of General Counsel, told Politico Trump had options to stop the release of his returns.

“I think Trump will be given an opportunity to either file a new case or file something in this case in which he states his legal grounds for objecting to his tax returns being produced,” he said, adding: “It’s definitely not over yet.”

  Guardian

Christ.

Elsewhere, the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr, has obtained copies of Trump’s personal and business tax records as part of a criminal investigation.

Let's move that along, Cy.

Anyway, I don't expect anything more than embarrassment to Trump in the returns, but I hope I'm wrong.

Deplorable

Donald Trump pressed senior Justice Department officials in late 2020 to “just say the election was corrupt [and] leave the rest to me” and Republican lawmakers, according to stunning handwritten notes that illustrate how far the president was willing to go to prevent Joe Biden from taking office.

The notes, taken by Justice Department official Richard Donoghue, were released to Congress this week and made public Friday

[...]

The documents show the extent to which senior Justice Department officials “were on a knife’s edge” in late 2020 as Trump sought to prevent Biden from becoming president, said David Laufman, a former senior Justice Department official.

[...]

In one Dec. 27 conversation, according to the written account, acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen told Trump that the Justice Department “can’t + won’t snap its fingers + change the outcome of the election.”

The president replied that he understood but wanted the agency to “just say the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen,” according to the notes written by Donoghue, a participant in the discussion.

[...]

“These notes reveal that a sitting president, defeated in a free and fair election, personally and repeatedly pressured Justice Department leaders to help him foment a coup in a last-ditch attempt to cling to power,” [David Laufman, a former senior Justice Department official] said. “And that should shock the conscience of every American, regardless of political persuasion.”

  WaPo

That's assuming the Republicans and Trump cultists have a conscience, and that's an assumption I'm not willing to make.

The notes were made public by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform on the same day the Justice Department announced that it would support the release of Trump’s personal and business tax returns to a different Democratic-controlled House committee — another legal setback for the former president, who could continue to fight the issue in court.

[...]

Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), chairwoman of the Oversight Committee, said the notes “show that President Trump directly instructed our nation’s top law enforcement agency to take steps to overturn a free and fair election in the final days of his presidency.”

[...]

The notes also say that Trump suggested to Rosen that he might be replaced at the helm of the Justice Department and even dropped the name of his possible successor.

“We have an obligation to tell people that this was an illegal, corrupt election,” Trump said, according to the notes. “People tell me Jeff Clark is great, I should put him in. People want me to replace DOJ leadership.”

The people being Trump and John Barron.

Donoghue’s notes show that Trump repeatedly brought up unsubstantiated tales of voter fraud in various states, which the Justice Department officials told him were not true.

“You guys may not be following the Internet the way I do,” Trump responded, according to the notes.

Which is why they weren't buying the bullshit.

Trump and his lawyers could have sought to block the release of Donoghue’s notes to Congress. There were days of discussion among Trump advisers about whether to do so, one adviser said, but the former president did not believe that the notes showed anything problematic, even though some of his advisers feared that the disclosures would be damaging.

“If it gets more attention on the election, he welcomes it,” this adviser said.

Fucking idiot.

[T]he Justice Department informed Rosen and others this week that their conversations with the president about the election were not protected by executive privilege.

In a statement revealing the content of the notes Friday, Maloney said that her committee “has begun scheduling interviews with key witnesses to investigate the full extent of the former President’s corruption, and I will exercise every tool at my disposal to ensure all witness testimony is secured without delay.”

And then impose no consequences?

Mr. Trump did not name the lawmakers, but at other points during the call, he mentioned Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, whom he described as a “fighter”; Representative Scott Perry, Republican of Pennsylvania, who at the time promoted the idea that the election was stolen from Mr. Trump; and Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, whom Mr. Trump praised for “getting to bottom of things.”

Mr. Jordan and Mr. Johnson denied any role in Mr. Trump’s efforts to pressure the Justice Department.

  NYT

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Prepare for Trump rants against the Supreme Court he packed

The supreme court has rejected Donald Trump’s request to block New York prosecutors from gaining access to his tax returns.

In a one-sentence unsigned order, the court ruled that it would not step in to prevent the Manhattan district attorney’s office from obtaining eight years of Trump’s financial documents from his accounting firm. The court’s decision clears the way for the documents to be turned over to a grand jury that has been convened as part of an investigation into Trump’s business dealings in New York.

The decision marks a serious defeat for Trump, who has fought for years to keep his tax returns from the public. The tax returns will not be publicly released as part of the grand jury investigation, but the former president has nevertheless launched extensive legal battles to block access to the documents.

  Guardian

Sad!

UPDATE:  But they won't hear Stormy Daniels' appeal.  Not sure that will placate him.  His finances are more important.

UPDATE 2/22:

Millions?

Why you pack the courts

For nearly four months, the court has refused to act on emergency filings related to a Manhattan grand jury's subpoena of Trump tax returns, effectively thwarting part of the investigation.

The Supreme Court's inaction marks an extraordinary departure from its usual practice of timely responses when the justices are asked to block a lower court decision on an emergency basis and has spurred questions about what is happening behind the scenes.

Chief Justice John Roberts, based on his past pattern, may be trying to appease dueling factions among the nine justices, to avoid an order that reinforces a look of partisan politics. Yet paradoxically, the unexplained delay smacks of politics and appears to ensnarl the justices even more in the controversies of Trump.

The Manhattan investigation, led by District Attorney Cyrus Vance, continues to draw extensive public attention. The grand jury is seeking Trump personal and business records back to 2011. Part of the probe involves hush-money payments Trump lawyer Michael Cohen made to cover up alleged affairs.

[...]

The controversy appeared to culminate at the Supreme Court last July, when the justices rejected Trump's claim that a sitting president is absolutely immune from criminal proceedings.

The 7-2 decision crafted by Roberts left some options for Trump on appeal, but lower court judges have since spurned Trump arguments, and his lawyers returned last fall to the high court for relief. Vance agreed to wait to enforce the long-pending subpoena until the justices acted on Trump's emergency request.

  CNN

So maybe it's time to enforce that subpoena. On the other hand...

CNN has learned that Trump's legal team is preparing to submit a petition to the justices by early March, based on a standard deadline for appeals, asking them to hear the merits of Trump's claim in oral arguments.

Could that be why Roberts hasn't dealt with the filings?

In Trump's October filing, his lawyers continued to maintain that the grand jury subpoena was overly broad and issued in bad faith to harass him. They said it "makes sweeping demands and ... crosses the line -- even were it aimed at some other citizen instead of the President."

The process for a petition for certiorari, as it is called, could add months to the case. If the justices agreed to hear the dispute fully on the merits, resolution could be a year off.

Justice delayed is justice denied.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Let us out of here

The law firm that handled the tax affairs of Donald Trump and his company during his presidency said it would stop representing him and his business.

The firm, Morgan Lewis & Bockius, is currently wrangling with the New York attorney general’s office over documents related to its work for the former president’s business, the Trump Organization. Led by Democratic Attorney General Letitia James, the office is conducting a civil-fraud probe into Mr. Trump’s financial dealings.

“We have had a limited representation of the Trump Organization and Donald Trump in tax-related matters,” a Morgan Lewis spokeswoman said. “For those matters not already concluded, we are transitioning as appropriate to other counsel.”

The spokeswoman didn’t provide a reason for the firm’s decision.

  WSJ

We can guess.

Morgan Lewis joins other firms that have distanced themselves from Mr. Trump in recent days. After the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, Seyfarth Shaw LLP said it had notified the Trump Organization it would no longer represent the company. “We are working with the company to secure new counsel for its ongoing commercial matters to ensure a smooth transition in accordance with our ethical obligations,” a Seyfarth spokesman said.

Sad!

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

And the Democrats' folding begins

Typical Democrats.  "Don't look backwards."  Read: Let them off the hook to get away with more in the future.

House Democrats are dropping their appeal of a federal judge's order that requires them to give notice if they request President Trump's New York tax returns under a state law.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.) and committee aide Andrew Grossman on Tuesday filed a motion with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to voluntarily dismiss the appeal.

Neal has never requested Trump's state tax returns and has been more interested in obtaining the president's federal tax filings.

"On the advice of counsel, the committee withdrew this appeal and will be focusing on its federal case to obtain the president’s tax returns," a Ways and Means Committee spokesperson said.

  The Hill

So why appeal it in the first place? Your counsel didn't advise against it then?

Before the committee sought to drop the appeal, it had requested several extensions to file its opening brief in the appeal over the course of the year because of House counsel's deadlines in other lawsuits and disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The most recent extension had postponed the deadline to file the brief to Wednesday.

[...]

Neal filed a separate lawsuit against the Trump administration last year in an effort to obtain Trump's federal returns. That case has yet to be resolved.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Whiny guy logs on

This, of course, means there's a story out.  I'll see if I can find it.

Ah, here it is:

When his skyscraper proved a disappointment, Donald Trump defaulted on his loans, sued his bank, got much of the debt forgiven — and largely avoided paying taxes on it.

[...]

The financial crisis was in full swing when Donald J. Trump traveled to Chicago in late September 2008 to mark the near-completion of his 92-floor skyscraper.

The fortunes of big companies, small businesses and millions of Americans — including the Trumps — were in peril.

[...]

He and his family hoped the Trump International Hotel & Tower would cement their company’s reputation as one of the world’s marquee developers of luxury real estate.

[...]

It was the biggest thing Mr. Trump ever built. It was also the last.

[...]

[T]he skyscraper became another disappointment in a portfolio filled with them. Construction lagged. Condos proved hard to sell. Retail space sat vacant.

Yet for Mr. Trump and his company, the Chicago experience also turned out to be something else: the latest example of his ability to strong-arm major financial institutions and exploit the tax code to cushion the blow of his repeated business failures.

  NYT

That last line set him off, I'm sure.

The president’s federal income tax records, obtained by The New York Times, show for the first time that, since 2010, his lenders have forgiven about $287 million in debt that he failed to repay. The vast majority was related to the Chicago project.

The New York Times has been getting a lot of mileage out of those tax records. No doubt this isn't the last story they'll dig up.

When the project encountered problems, he tried to walk away from his huge debts. [...] [R]ather than warring with a notoriously litigious and headline-seeking client, lenders cut Mr. Trump slack — exactly what he seemed to have been counting on.

Big banks and hedge funds gave him years of extra time to repay his debts. Even after Mr. Trump sued his largest lender, accusing it of preying on him, the bank agreed to lend him another $99 million — more than twice as much as was previously known — so that he could pay back what he still owed the bank on the defaulted Chicago loan, records show.

Here's another idea: he may have been privy to some bank's money laundering deals, as he himself was intimately involved with Russian mobsters. They may not have been as worried about being sued by Trump as being exposed. Just a thought.

Those forgiven debts are now part of a broader investigation of Mr. Trump’s business by the New York attorney general. They normally would have generated a big tax bill, since the Internal Revenue Service treats canceled debts as income. Yet as has often happened in his long career, Mr. Trump appears to have paid almost no federal income tax on that money, in part because of large losses in his other businesses.

[...]

To pay for the construction [of the Chicago tower], Mr. Trump arranged for two of his L.L.C.s, 401 North Wabash Venture — named for the project’s address — and its parent company, 401 Mezz Venture, to borrow more than $700 million.

Mr. Trump went to his longtime lender, Deutsche Bank, for the bulk of the money. Since 1998, he had borrowed hundreds of millions of dollars from the German bank. It had been so eager to establish a foothold in the United States that it had overlooked his history of defaults.

Again, I might mention the money laundering. But, go on...

Mr. Trump assured Deutsche Bank officials, including Justin Kennedy, the son of the now-retired Supreme Court justice Anthony Kennedy, [...]

Sorry to interrupt again...ever wonder why Anthony Kennedy stepped down?

[...] that the Chicago development was a guaranteed moneymaker. In a sign of the Trump family’s commitment to the project, Mr. Trump told his bankers that his daughter Ivanka would be in charge.

[...]

Mr. Trump agreed to personally guarantee $40 million of the [$640 million] loan. If his L.L.C. were to default, Deutsche Bank could collect that money directly from Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump also went to Fortress Investment Group, a hedge fund and private equity company, for $130 million. This was a so-called mezzanine loan, which meant that it would be repaid only after the Deutsche Bank debt had been satisfied. Because of the greater risk, the Fortress loan came with a double-digit interest rate. The agreement with Fortress also required Mr. Trump’s 401 Mezz Venture to pay a $49 million “exit fee” when it repaid the loan.

If Mr. Trump defaulted, his lenders could seize the building.

Deutsche Bank and Fortress both planned to chop up the loans and sell at least some of the pieces. Deutsche Bank sold them mostly to American, European and Asian banks, Fortress mostly to private equity and hedge funds, including Dune Capital Management, which had recently been co-founded by Steven Mnuchin, the future Treasury secretary.

Hmmmm, you don't suppose Steve Mnuchin has some shady financial issues, do you?

The loans were due in May 2008.

[...]

Work on the project went more slowly than planned, and the residential portion was still under construction as the loans came due.

With the financial crisis enveloping the world, finding buyers for multimillion-dollar apartments suddenly became much harder. In the spring of 2008, Mr. Trump asked Deutsche Bank to delay the loan’s due date. The bank gave him an extra six months.

In mid-September, the crisis crescendoed with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. Financial markets went haywire.

How well we remember those days.

At that point, at least 159 units in the building were still unsold, and many more were under contract but hadn’t closed, according to New York court records. That meant hundreds of millions of dollars that Mr. Trump and his family had counted on to repay Deutsche Bank and Fortress hadn’t yet materialized. And the loans were due in barely six weeks.

Mr. Trump sought another extension. This time, Deutsche Bank said no.

Mr. Trump’s company still owed Deutsche Bank about $334 million in principal and interest, and Fortress $130 million, not including interest and fees.

Mr. Trump went on the offensive. In a letter to Deutsche Bank on Nov. 4, he accused it of helping ignite the financial crisis. This was important, because Mr. Trump went on to claim that the crisis constituted a “force majeure” — an act of God, like a natural disaster — that entitled him to extra time to repay the loans.

A few days later, Mr. Trump and his companies sued Deutsche Bank and Fortress, along with the other banks and hedge funds that had purchased pieces of the loans.

Which crooked lawyer did he have then?

Deutsche Bank soon filed its own lawsuit, accusing its longtime client of being a habitual deadbeat and demanding immediate repayment of the now-defaulted loans.

Inside Deutsche Bank, angry executives and lawyers vowed to never again do business with Mr. Trump, according to senior executives.

Did Kennedy's son suffer any blowback?

Why didn’t the lenders seize the building?

Going to court to take over the unfinished skyscraper promised to be a costly, yearslong process, especially given Mr. Trump’s reputation for using the legal system to drag out fights and grind down opponents. It seemed simpler to resolve the dispute.

On July 28, 2010, lawyers for Mr. Trump, Deutsche Bank and Fortress notified the court that they had reached a private settlement. The terms weren’t disclosed.

[...]

Mr. Trump was let off the hook for about $270 million. It was the type of generous financial break that few American companies or individuals could ever expect to receive, especially without filing for bankruptcy protection.

[...]

Fortress and its partners — including Mr. Mnuchin’s Dune Capital, as well as Cerberus Capital Management, whose co-chief executive, Stephen A. Feinberg, would become a major Trump fund-raiser and go on to lead a White House advisory panel — quickly realized they wouldn’t ever collect [the] full amount.

Ultimately, Fortress settled for $48 million, which Mr. Trump wired to the firm in March 2012.

[...]

Fortress had expected to receive more than $300 million.

[...]

In many ways, it repeated a pattern that had played out more than a decade earlier at Mr. Trump’s Atlantic City casinos: a cycle of defaulting on debts and then persuading already-burned lenders to cut him a break.

Don't try this at home.

Trump’s companies got a pass on the money they owed on the Deutsche Bank loan, too.

[...]

By 2012, the Trump Organization had drummed up about $235 million to repay the financial institutions to whom Deutsche Bank had sold pieces of the original loan. They included banks and asset managers in the United States, Germany, Ireland and China, according to court records.

But Mr. Trump still owed $99 million, according to people familiar with the debt. Where would he come up with that money?

Though Deutsche Bank had vowed to do no more business with Mr. Trump, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, introduced him to his personal wealth manager at the bank, Rosemary Vrablic. Ms. Vrablic, with the support of her superiors, soon agreed to restart the relationship with Mr. Trump.

Rosemary should be lawyering up and preparing for testimony. Oh wait, she already is. 

 "Ms. Vrablic was thrust into the spotlight when Mr. Trump boasted to The Times in 2016 about his strong relationship with Deutsche Bank — and inflated Ms. Vrablic’s role at the bank. “Why don’t you call the head of Deutsche Bank? Her name is Rosemary Vrablic,” he said in the interview. “She is the boss.”"

[O]ne wing of Deutsche Bank was providing Mr. Trump the money to repay another division of the same bank.

[...]

Ms. Vrablic’s team also lent Mr. Trump’s company $125 million for work on his Doral golf resort in Florida and up to $170 million to transform the Old Post Office building in Washington into a luxury hotel. Mr. Trump personally guaranteed those loans, too.

[...]

The following spring, the Trump Organization repaid $54 million, according to a person briefed on the matter and Cook County records. That left $45 million outstanding. But in 2014, Deutsche Bank agreed to lend another $24 million on the property and to extend the due date until 2024, records show. Mr. Trump now owed the bank $69 million. By May 2016, he had repaid the $24 million.

[...]

Because they counted as investments in his business for tax purposes, the guarantees increased the amount of losses he could use to avoid income taxes in the future. Mr. Trump’s federal tax returns show that he has personally guaranteed the repayment of $421 million in debts.

Don't try that at home either.

At the end of 2018, Mr. Trump and his companies owed the bank $330 million.

The I.R.S. requires taxpayers to treat forgiven debts as income when calculating what they owe in federal taxes. The New York attorney general, Letitia James, is investigating whether Mr. Trump followed the law.

The tax records reviewed by The Times show that while Mr. Trump accounted for $287 million of income from his canceled debts, he managed to avoid paying income taxes on nearly all of it.

Mr. Trump reported $40 million of forgiven debt as income in 2010. But losses from his businesses — including $30.8 million in red ink on the Chicago project — meant he had no taxable income that year.

[...]

He would generally have been entitled to write off the total amount he spent on a building over a number of years, a process known as depreciation. Instead, he agreed to reduce those eventual write-offs by $104.8 million, an alternative allowed in tax law.

For the other $141 million, Mr. Trump took advantage of a law, passed after the 2008 financial crisis, that allowed income from canceled debts to be deferred for five years and then spread out over the next five. Each year from 2014 through 2018, Mr. Trump declared $28.2 million of canceled-debt income.

As it turned out, though, losses in other parts of his business wiped out most of his federal tax bill on that income. He paid nothing for 2014; $641,931 for 2015; and, after credits, only $750 a year for 2016 and 2017. It isn’t clear how much he paid for 2018.

[...]

[The Chicago] skyscraper’s fortunes have withered. Most of its retail space has never been occupied, The Real Deal reported last year. Its revenue declined from $67 million in 2014 to $50 million in 2018, while profits plunged from $16.3 million to $1.8 million over the same period.

The problems intensified in 2020, as the coronavirus forced restaurants, including Mr. Trump’s in Chicago, to close. The Trump family sought financial relief from Deutsche Bank among others.

The bank offered to let Mr. Trump’s companies pause interest payments on their loans. The Trump Organization decided the bank’s proposal was insufficiently generous and turned it down.

The loans come due in 2023 and 2024.

At which time, if he's not behind bars (and probably even if he is), he'll arrange some other dubious deal.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Trump's personal interests in China

President Trump has spent months insisting Joe Biden is in hoc to China. “China is on a massive disinformation campaign because they are desperate to have Sleepy Joe Biden win the presidential race,” Trump tweeted last spring. “Beijing Biden is so weak on China that the intelligence community recently assessed that the Chinese Communist Party favors Biden,” claimed his son, falsely, this summer. More recently, he has seized upon hacked emails purporting to show financial links between Biden and China.

But Biden does not have financial ties to China. We know this because he released his tax returns. Trump has not released his tax returns. But the New York Times has obtained at least some of them. And they found that Trump has a Chinese bank account, and suggest he has collected earnings from that country while serving as president.

  NYMagazine

Senate Republicans produced a report asserting, among other things, that Mr. Biden’s son Hunter “opened a bank account” with a Chinese businessman, part of what it said were his numerous connections to “foreign nationals and foreign governments across the globe.”

  NYT

You know what's coming.

But Mr. Trump’s own business history is filled with overseas financial deals, and some have involved the Chinese state. He spent a decade unsuccessfully pursuing projects in China, operating an office there during his first run for president and forging a partnership with a major government-controlled company.

And it turns out that China is one of only three foreign nations — the others are Britain and Ireland — where Mr. Trump maintains a bank account, according to an analysis of the president’s tax records, which were obtained by The New York Times.

Well, well, well.

The foreign accounts do not show up on Mr. Trump’s public financial disclosures, where he must list personal assets, because they are held under corporate names. The identities of the financial institutions are not clear.

Hmmm.

The Chinese account is controlled by Trump International Hotels Management L.L.C., which the tax records show paid $188,561 in taxes in China while pursuing licensing deals there from 2013 to 2015.

Meanwhile, he's paying essentially zero taxes in the United States. nice.

The British and Irish accounts are held by companies that operate Mr. Trump’s golf courses in Scotland and Ireland, which regularly report millions of dollars in revenue from those countries. Trump International Hotels Management reported just a few thousand dollars from China.

In response to questions from The Times, Alan Garten, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, said the company had “opened an account with a Chinese bank having offices in the United States in order to pay the local taxes” associated with efforts to do business there. He said the company had opened the account after establishing an office in China “to explore the potential for hotel deals in Asia.”

[...]

Mr. Garten would not identify the bank in China where the account is held. Until last year, China’s biggest state-controlled bank rented three floors in Trump Tower, a lucrative lease that drew accusations of a conflict of interest for the president.

One among many.

His campaign has tried to portray Mr. Biden as a “puppet” of China who, as vice president, misread the dangers posed by its growing power. Mr. Trump has also sought to tar his opponent with overblown or unsubstantiated assertions about Hunter Biden’s business dealings there while his father was in office.

“He’s like a vacuum cleaner — he follows his father around collecting,” Mr. Trump said recently, referring to Mr. Biden’s son. “What a disgrace. It’s a crime family.”

Typical Trump projection.

In a misleading claim amplified by surrogates like his son Donald Trump Jr. and his lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president has said the younger Mr. Biden “walked out of China” with $1.5 billion after accompanying his father on an official trip in 2013. Numerous news articles and fact-checking sites have explained that the huge figure was actually a fund-raising goal set by an investment firm in which Hunter Biden obtained a 10 percent stake after his father left office. The firm did receive financial backing from a large state-controlled bank, but it is not clear the fund-raising target was ever met, and there is no evidence Hunter Biden received a large personal payout.

The Trumps don't need evidence.

As for the former vice president, his public financial disclosures, along with the income tax returns he voluntarily released, show no income or business dealings of his own in China. However, there is ample evidence of Mr. Trump’s efforts to join the myriad American firms that have long done business there — and the tax records for him and his companies that were obtained by The Times offer new details about them.

[...]

Trump has long sought a licensing deal in China. His efforts go at least as far back as 2006, when he filed trademark applications in Hong Kong and the mainland. Many Chinese government approvals came after he became president. (The president’s daughter Ivanka Trump also won Chinese trademark approvals for her personal business after she joined the White House staff.)

And don't forget, one of Ivanka's many Chinese trademarks was for voting machines. Jewelry, clothing, shoes, handbags, sausage casing, nursing homes, and voting machines. In 2016.

Trump found a partner in the State Grid Corporation, one of the nation’s largest government-controlled enterprises. Agence France-Presse reported in 2016 that the partnership would have involved licensing and managing a development in Beijing. Mr. Trump was reportedly still pursuing the deal months into his first presidential campaign, but it was abandoned after State Grid became ensnared in a corruption investigation by Chinese authorities.

Imagine that. Trump dealing with a corrupt business.

But Mr. Trump’s plans in China have been largely driven by a different company, Trump International Hotels Management — the one with a Chinese bank account.

The company has direct ownership of THC China Development, but is also involved in management of other Trump-branded properties around the world, and it is not possible to discern from its tax records how much of its financial activity is China-related. It normally reports a few million dollars in annual income and deductible expenses.

In 2017, the company reported an unusually large spike in revenue — some $17.5 million, more than the previous five years’ combined. It was accompanied by a $15.1 million withdrawal by Mr. Trump from the company’s capital account.

Sounds like a "business" to line Trump's pockets.

On the president’s public financial disclosures for that year, he reported the large revenue figure, and described it only as “management fees and other contract payments.”

[...]

During the 2016 campaign, a shell company controlled by a Chinese couple from Vancouver bought 11 units [in a Trump hotel], for $3.1 million, in the Las Vegas tower Mr. Trump co-owns with the casino magnate Phil Ruffin. The owner of a Las Vegas-based financial services firm told The Times he was later visited by two F.B.I. agents asking about the company behind the purchases, which he said had used his office address in incorporation papers without his knowledge. It is not known what became of the inquiry.

I'm going to guess there are a number of threads in a Trump file at the FBI.

[A Trump representative] said the Trump Organization had “never been contacted by the F.B.I. and has no knowledge of any investigation.”

They wouldn't necessarily contact you while investigating you, would they? 

Is there a secret deal with China to let Trump sling mud at them in trade wars and the coronavirus pandemic to hide these damaging payments?

Perhaps they were gambling it wouldn't be published before the election?  Or, perhaps, they didn't know about it.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Let the whining begin

Oh, he will, Mark.  He will.

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero threw out President Donald Trump’s challenge to a subpoena seeking his tax returns, a decision that all but guarantees a New York grand jury access to these documents in the near future. Trump will fight Thursday’s order, but he has run out of options: The Supreme Court already rejected his sweeping claims on immunity, then gave Marrero a road map that led ineluctably to a decision against the president. And soon, at long last, New York prosecutors will obtain the tax returns that he has fought so long to conceal.

  Slate

Let the leaks begin.

New York County District Attorney Cy Vance reportedly began investigating Trump in 2018 for the illegal hush money payments that Michael Cohen made on his behalf. Since then, prosecutors have indicated that they are also looking into bank and insurance fraud by Trump and his companies. In 2019, a New York grand jury subpoenaed Mazars, Trump’s shadowy accounting firm, for eight years of financial records from both Trump and his businesses, including tax returns. The president, aided by the Department of Justice, intervened to quash the subpoena. Trump’s lawyers argued that sitting presidents are absolutely immune from state criminal subpoenas. Alternatively, they insisted that prosecutors should have to show a “heightened need” when subpoenaing the president, demonstrating that their action is a “last resort” to obtain information “not available from any other source.”

Chief Justice John Roberts’ opinion for SCOTUS, issued in July, rejected both these arguments. [...] However, Roberts noted, a president may challenge a subpoena that is issued in bad faith if he can show it was designed to harass him. He can also defeat a subpoena by showing that it will impede his constitutional duties. The chief justice then sent the case back down to the lower courts, giving Trump an opportunity to raise these final objections.

[...]

[T]he chief justice surely knew that none of those objections had any merit in this case.

[...]

The president did not establish that turning over his tax returns would prevent him exercising his executive powers. He barely even tried—perhaps because a president who spends so many days tweeting his grievances cannot plausibly insist that an otherwise valid subpoena would somehow hinder his ability to lead the nation.

[...]

Trump’s inevitable appeal may help him run down the clock a bit longer: Marrero’s ruling will probably remain on hold while the federal appeals court—then, once again, the Supreme Court—review his conclusions.

Jesus Christ. How many times can he run this through the Supreme Court?

Trump’s inevitable appeal may help him run down the clock a bit longer: Marrero’s ruling will probably remain on hold while the federal appeals court—then, once again, the Supreme Court—review his conclusions.But Roberts is clearly done with this case and is unlikely to keep the subpoena on ice. That is, to put it mildly, bad news for the president. Less than one month before some Americans begin voting, a New York grand jury is poised to see documents that may prove Trump to be the head of a criminal enterprise.

Something we all know is true already.

Supreme Court denies Democrats' request for expedition re Trump tax return

The Supreme Court on Monday denied a request by House Democrats to accelerate the timeline of remaining court battles over congressional subpoenas for President Trump’s tax returns.

The bid by lawmakers came in response to the court’s landmark 7-2 ruling earlier this month to shield a trove of Trump’s financial records from several Democratic-led House committees and return the dispute to lower courts for further litigation.

  The Hill

Interesting, because they granted the same request to Cyrus Vance in New York.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Cyrus Vance is ready to roll - Part 2

The Supreme Court has agreed to expedite the matter.

The Supreme Court on Friday granted the Manhattan district attorney's request to expedite its recent decision rejecting President Trump's claims of absolute immunity from a subpoena for eight years of tax returns.

Chief Justice John Roberts ordered the decision to go into effect immediately. The president's legal team did not oppose the move.

The order will allow the remaining proceedings at the district court level to advance more swiftly. It normally takes nearly a month for the Supreme Court's decisions to go into effect.

The court ruled 7-2 last week that the president does not have absolute immunity in state criminal investigations like the one that led to a grand jury subpoena for Trump's financial records. But the justices said in their decision that the president can still challenge the subpoena on other grounds.

Trump's lawyers made clear this week that they intend to do just that.

  The Hill

Goes without saying.

The president's legal team has until July 27 to raise their new legal challenges to the subpoena.

[...]

"What the president’s lawyers are seeking here is delay," Carey Dunne, a lawyer with the district attorney's office, said during a Thursday court hearing. "I think that’s the entire strategy. Every day that goes by, the president wins the type of absolute temporary immunity he’s been seeking in this case, even though he’s lost on that claim before every court that’s heard it, including now the Supreme Court."

Cyrus Vance is ready to roll

On the matter of the recent SCOTUS decision that Trump is not immune from subpoenas...

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Recommend podcast

Renato Mariotti and Joyce Vance discuss recent Supreme Court rulings in Trump tax return case, and toward the end give us hope that there are attorneys who will forego riches to "do the right thing."

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Trump's IRS "deal"

This is the second time I've seen mention of a deal Trump made with the IRS years ago.  Something about not having to pay taxes for 20 years???

I want to know more about this deal.  Here's what Wikipedia has to say:

Trump lost $1.17 billion between 1985 and 1994 according to 10 years of Trump's tax information obtained by the New York Times, with the amount more than "nearly any other individual American taxpayer" during that period. Although Trump has acknowledged the tax-advantaged nature of the real estate business due to large depreciation write-offs to generate losses and reduce tax liabilities, the Times reported "depreciation cannot account for the hundreds of millions of dollars in losses."[30][31][32] Due to losing more than $500 million in combined losses, section 172 of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 gave Trump $915.7 million in tax exemption, which he used to pay off 8 years of taxes.[33][34][35]

Parts of Trump's 1995 and 2005 tax returns have been leaked.[36][37]

In October 2016, The New York Times published some tax documents from 1995. The New York Times reported that the Times had been given three pages of certain state tax returns for Trump for the year 1995. The materials indicated that Trump incurred a $916 million net operating loss which, for Federal income tax purposes, could have prevented Trump from owing any Federal income taxes for up to 18 years.[38]

Trump claimed on his tax returns that he lost money, but did not recognize it in the form of canceled debts. Trump might have performed a stock-for-debt swap. This would have allowed Trump to avoid paying income taxes for at least 18 years. An audit of Trump's tax returns for 2002 through 2008 was "closed administratively by agreement with the I.R.S. without assessment or payment, on a net basis, of any deficiency." Tax attorneys believe the government may have reduced what Trump was able to claim as a loss without requiring him to pay any additional taxes.[40][41] It is unknown whether the I.R.S. challenged Trump's use of the swaps because he has not released his tax returns. Trump's lawyers advised against Trump using the equity for debt swap, as they believed it to be potentially illegal.[42]

  Wikipedia

So 18 years from 1995 only gets to 2013.  What is Trump claiming the IRS abandoned in 2015?  Or is he admitting he ran for president more than once?  Someething he has lied about several times - that his 2016 run was his first.  However you slice it, Trump is lying about the IRS "deal".   And I'd still like to know what that deal was.  It may not have been a deal at all.  Just a huge loss that kept him from having to pay taxes for a long stretch.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Ha!

Tell it to Cyrus Vance.  He's coming for them.

Also...

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Trump reacts to Supreme Court ruling on his tax returns

Arguments to continue won't help here.  He lost in the "Lower Court" in the first place.  That's how it got to the Supreme Court.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

His second tweet:

Whiny bitch.

UPDATE:

STOP THE PRESSES

This just in...

This is NOT the court he thought he was buying.  Pro-Trump votes were from Alito and Uncle Thomas. Trump appointees Kavanaugh and Gorsuch voted with the liberals and Chief Justice Roberts to reject Trump's claim of immunity.

And what's more, this is a win for the Manhattan DA, not federal courts, so there's nothing Bill Barr can do about it.

And Trump was already fuming an hour ago about something he saw on Fox.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:  His first tweet...

Arguments to continue won't help here.  He lost in the "Lower Court" in the first place.  That's how it got to the Supreme Court.