Tag: tax return

Trump’s Son: Tax Returns ‘Detract’ from Political Message

Donald Trump’s son has a new reason to explain why his father won’t release his tax returns: They’ll steal from his political message.

“Because he’s got a 12,000-page tax return that would create … financial auditors out of every person in the country asking questions that would detract from (his father’s) main message,” Donald Trump, Jr. told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review in a piece published Wednesday.

That’s a dramatic shift from the Republican nominee’s longtime explanation that an ongoing audit is preventing him from releasing his tax returns. (There are no laws barring Trump from disclosing his tax returns while he is being audited).

The comment reflects the political potency of Trump’s tax returns. There are growing questions about what’s in the documents, including details of investments in foreign countries. House Speaker Paul Ryan, who was the GOP’s vice presidential nominee in 2012, said Thursday that presidential candidates should release their tax returns.

“I released mine,” Ryan said. “I think we should release our returns. I’ll leave it to him when to do it.”

Former Rep. Jack Kingston, a Georgia Republican, sought to connect Trump Jr.’s comments with the campaign’s longtime audit explanation. In a Thursday interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on “The Situation Room,” Kingston said releasing the tax returns could influence the IRS audit process.

“If you put it on the table, you’re going to have 300 million Americans second-guessing what is this, what is that?” Kingston said. “That actually, I think, would influence the IRS because they would say, ‘Oh, wait, somebody out in Idaho said this. Somebody in Chicago said that. Somebody in New York said this.’ Then they’re off chasing things.”

Rep. Steve King, an Iowa Republican, told CNN’s Chris Cuomo on Wednesday that putting out the returns would lead to misinterpretations.

“With a $10 billion business, if Donald Trump dumped his taxes out today, there would be all kinds of misinterpretations of that and maybe some real interpretations of that between now and November. That would be the only discussion we’d have,” King, a Trump supporter, said on “New Day.” “So I’d say the window is closed on that but I wish he had done so last March or April.”

Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton has released nearly four decades of tax returns.

(h/t CNN)

Reality

Trump had a contradictory position 4 years ago when he demanded Mitt Romney to release his tax returns.

As for the “audit” excuse, the fact remains that this rationale has never made any sense: an IRS audit doesn’t preclude someone from sharing their returns.

Since Watergate, every presidential candidate, Democrat or Republican, has released his or her tax returns. It’s not required by law, but there’s a tradition of disclosure that Americans have come to count on during the presidential vetting process: candidates for the nation’s highest office are expected to release information related to their personal health and their tax filings.

Indeed even Richard Nixon, during his presidency, released his tax materials in the midst of an IRS audit. Trump could, if he wanted to, release these returns whenever he feels like it. For reasons he won’t explain, the GOP candidate just doesn’t want to.

It’s as if the campaign has decided to wave a big, unmistakable sign that reads, “We have something to hide.”

New Trump Campaign Manager No Longer Wants Him to Release His Tax Returns

Donald Trump’s new campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, said that she does not want the Republican presidential nominee to release his tax returns until an audit by the Internal Revenue Service is completed, abandoning a position that she took five months ago, when she didn’t work for the campaign and urged Trump to “be transparent” and release the filings.

“I’ve learned since being on the inside that this audit is a serious matter and that he has said that when the audit is complete, he will release his tax returns,” Conway said during an interview on ABC’s “This Week” that aired Sunday morning. “I also know as a pollster that what concerns people most about quote ‘taxes’ is their own tax liability, and so we appreciate people being able to see Hillary Clinton’s plan and Donald Trump’s plan and figure out who will really get the middle-class tax relief.”

According to Trump’s attorneys, his tax returns filed since 2009 are under audit but those from 2002 to 2008 are no longer under audit. Conway said Sunday in an interview on CNN that she does not want Trump to release those returns, either.

On ABC, Conway also took a swipe at Clinton over transparency: “I’m glad that he’s transparent about a number of things, and we’re certainly running against the least accountable, least transparent, I think, joyless candidate in presidential political history.”

Trump is the first major presidential nominee from either party since 1976 to not release tax returns. Last summer, Clinton released returns from 2007 to 2014, and her campaign shared her 2015 return this month, as well as 10 years of returns from her running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia. Trump’s running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, has said that he plans to release his tax returns, with a spokesman telling CNN that this would happen before the election.

In April, Conway appeared on CNN and defended a short-lived alliance between Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) to stop Trump, a strategy that she considered “fair game.”

“Of course it’s fair game,” Conway said. “Oh, absolutely. It’s completely transparent. Donald Trump’s tax returns aren’t, and I would like to see those be transparent.”

During the Sunday interview on CNN, Conway said she didn’t understand why Trump’s tax returns have become such a big issue.

“This entire tax return debate is somewhat confounding to me, in the following sense: I don’t think that it creates one job, gets one more individual who does not have health insurance covered by health insurance, particularly under the disaster that has been Obamacare with these private insurers pulling out our exchanges now and reporting billions of dollars of losses,” Conway said. “If we want transparency, if we want specifics, the most relevant thing that people can look at is what is his plan for their tax bill.”

(h/t The Washington Post)

Reality

Trump had a contradictory position 4 years ago when he demanded Mitt Romney to release his tax returns.

As for the “audit” excuse, the fact remains that this rationale has never made any sense: an IRS audit doesn’t preclude someone from sharing their returns.

Since Watergate, every presidential candidate, Democrat or Republican, has released his or her tax returns. It’s not required by law, but there’s a tradition of disclosure that Americans have come to count on during the presidential vetting process: candidates for the nation’s highest office are expected to release information related to their personal health and their tax filings.

Indeed even Richard Nixon, during his presidency, released his tax materials in the midst of an IRS audit. Trump could, if he wanted to, release these returns whenever he feels like it. For reasons he won’t explain, the GOP candidate just doesn’t want to.

It’s as if the campaign has decided to wave a big, unmistakable sign that reads, “We have something to hide.”

Media

ABC This Morning – 8/21/2016

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EH3zk0NShI

CNN – 8/21/2016

You Can Stop Waiting for Trump’s Tax Return, He Won’t Show Them

Since Watergate, every presidential candidate, Democrat or Republican, has released his or her tax returns. It’s not required by law, but there’s a tradition of disclosure that Americans have come to count on: candidates for the nation’s highest office are expected to release information related to their personal health and their tax filings.

In 2016, Donald Trump will only meet one of the two standards. In December, his campaign released an unintentionally hilarious letter from someone claiming to be Trump’s personal physician. But this morning, the GOP candidate’s campaign chairman said we can pretty much stop waiting for the tax documents – because they’re not coming, tradition be damned.

A top aide to Donald Trump said Wednesday that the Republican presidential nominee “will not be releasing” his taxes.

“Mr. Trump has said that his taxes are under audit and he will not be releasing them,” Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort told “CBS This Morning.”

As recently as mid-May, Trump said that he’d “like to” disclose the tax documents, “hopefully before the election,” but he’s waiting for the end of an IRS audit. Manafort’s on-air comments this morning, however, suggest there will be no scrutiny of the documents before voters head to the polls.

As for the “audit” excuse, the fact remains that this rationale has never made any sense: an IRS audit doesn’t preclude someone from sharing their returns.

Indeed even Richard Nixon, during his presidency, released his tax materials in the midst of an IRS audit. Trump could, if he wanted to, release these returns whenever he feels like it. For reasons he won’t explain, the GOP candidate just doesn’t want to.

It’s as if the campaign has decided to wave a big, unmistakable sign that reads, “We have something to hide.”

The unfortunate complication here is that there’s probably never been a major-party nominee whose tax returns are more in need of public scrutiny. Donald J. Trump has been caught up in so many financial controversies – his bankruptcies, his lawsuits, his alleged ties to Russian financiers, his dubious claims about charitable work that appear to be brazen lies, et al – that the New York Republican has the added responsibility to tell Americans the whole truth before the cast their ballots in the fall.

But Trump doesn’t want to, and according to his lobbyist campaign chief, “he will not be releasing” the same materials every other candidate has released.

Trump, who had vowed to release his returns before he announced his candidacy, is convinced he can get away with this and voters won’t care. We’re about to find out if he’s correct.

Reality

Trump had a contradictory position 4 years ago when he demanded Mitt Romney to release his tax returns.

Media

CBS This Morning

Donald Trump on His Tax Rate: ‘It’s None of Your Business’

Once again thumbing his nose at a time-honored tradition, Donald J. Trump said Friday that he does not believe voters have a right to see his tax returns, and he insisted it was “none of your business” when pressed on what tax rate he pays.

The remarks from Mr. Trump signal that he has little intention of disclosing verifiable details of his income or what fuels his wealth, a matter of endless speculation for a candidate who boasts of being a billionaire many times over despite his past brushes with bankruptcy and increasing reliance on celebrity-oriented income and licensing deals that use his name.

While not required to release their tax returns, all the major party presidential nominees have done so for roughly the past four decades, including President Richard M. Nixon, who released them despite undergoing an Internal Revenue Service audit. Mr. Trump has cited continuing I.R.S. audits of his taxes in refusing to release his returns.

When Mr. Trump was asked on ABC’s “Good Morning America” whether he thought voters had a right to see his returns, he replied, “I don’t think they do.”

Mr. Trump added of his taxes: “It’s under routine audit. When the audit ends, I’m going to present them. That should be before the election. I hope it’s before the election.”

But when asked by the interviewer, George Stephanopoulos, what effective tax rate he pays, Mr. Trump said, “It’s none of your business.” He added, “You’ll see it when I release, but I fight very hard to pay as little tax as possible.”

The release of tax returns bedeviled Republicans during the 2012 presidential election, when Mitt Romney delayed releasing his until September. His effective tax rate, which was below 20 percent, was used by President Obama’s team to lampoon him as a wealthy corporate raider who was out for himself and who could not understand how regular people lived. Mr. Trump has said that Mr. Romney erred in waiting so long to release his taxes and should have done so sooner.

For many years, Mr. Trump’s wealth has been a moving target, subject to much estimation, debate and even litigation.

Last summer, when Mr. Trump filed the personal financial disclosures required of presidential candidates, his campaign released a statement saying that he was worth more than “TEN BILLION DOLLARS,” capitalizing the outsize figure. When the 92-page document became public, the disclosures by Mr. Trump indicated that he had at least $1.4 billion in assets, including his real estate developments and golf clubs.

Fortune recently pegged his worth at $3.72 billion. Forbes calculated it at $4.5 billion, as of September 2015.

Mr. Trump disputed both numbers, just as he objected to an estimate a decade earlier when Timothy L. O’Brien, a reporter for The New York Times, wrote a book that placed the businessman’s net worth at $150 million to $250 million, based on three confidential sources. During a well-publicized episode, he sued Mr. O’Brien for defamation, but Mr. Trump ultimately failed to prove his case.

While his tax returns would not show Mr. Trump’s net worth, they would show investment income and where those investments are held, liens and the scope and type of his charitable contributions.

Kenneth A. Gross, a lawyer with Skadden who deals regularly with tax issues, suggested that the contents of Mr. Trump’s tax returns were certainly of public interest because they would provide insight into his finances that his previously disclosed financial documents do not.

“Obviously it could raise issues about deductions, reporting of income, all sorts of things that we worry about when we file our tax returns,” Mr. Gross said. “There’s obviously something of interest because it’s being audited. It would be, I think, important to see what’s in these returns before he becomes the nominee of the Republican Party.”

But Mr. Trump was adamant in his interview on Friday that “people will learn nothing” from his returns, noting how he had released his financial disclosure statement.

“I put in financials, 100 pages worth of financials, that show that I built a company that’s worth more than $10 billion,” Mr. Trump said. “It shows cash. It shows cash flows. It shows everything. You learn very little from tax returns, but nevertheless, when the audit is complete, I will release. I have no problem with it.” He added that he has no offshore accounts.

As the issue of Mr. Trump’s returns bubbled up over the past week, Democrats treaded relatively lightly on the matter, particularly since Hillary Clinton faces pressure to release transcripts of her paid speeches to Wall Street banks like Goldman Sachs. But on Wednesday Mrs. Clinton seized on Mr. Trump’s reluctance to release his returns.

“So you’ve got to ask yourself, ‘Why doesn’t he want to release them?’ ” Mrs. Clinton said on Wednesday. “Yeah, well, we’re going to find out.”

She and Bill Clinton have released their tax returns going back to 1977, when he first entered political life.

The I.R.S. will not confirm if a person is being audited or discuss their returns, but Eric Smith, a spokesman for the agency, said taxpayers are free to publicize their own financial documents at any time.

“Nothing prevents individuals from sharing their own tax information,” Mr. Smith said.

In a letter on his campaign website, Mr. Trump’s tax counsels wrote in March that his returns have been under “continuous examination” by the I.R.S. since 2002 because he has a big business. The audits from those returns from 2002 to 2008 have been completed, they wrote, but lingering questions about those returns remain, an apparent explanation as to why he will not release years no longer under “examination.”

The public interest group Common Cause put out a statement calling on Mr. Trump to release the tax returns, pointing out that he released returns from the early 2000s that were under audit to gambling commissions in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Mr. Trump has given different explanations for why he will not release his taxes over the years. In 2011, when he contemplated running for president, Mr. Trump said he would release his tax returns when President Obama released his birth certificate. Mr. Obama made the birth certificate public in April 2011, and Mr. Trump announced a few weeks later that he would not run for president.

Last year, Mr. Trump said he was still considering whether to release the returns, but he made no mention of the audits until this year.

Tax experts remain divided on the wisdom of Mr. Trump’s releasing his returns, with some arguing that it would be malpractice to advise a client to make such information public during an audit and others saying that he should have nothing to hide.

Robert J. Kovacev, a tax lawyer with Steptoe & Johnson who previously worked at the Department of Justice, said the scrutiny that Mr. Trump’s returns would face could add years to the audit because the I.R.S. would be pressured to examine details that critics of Mr. Trump seized upon. That could impose additional costs on Mr. Trump and disrupt his negotiations with the agency.

“If you put it out in public, it’s almost like you’re crowdsourcing the audit,” Mr. Kovacev said.

While Mr. Trump has said acknowledged that he strives to pay as little tax as possible, Mr. Kovacev suggested that his returns could have information about offshore holdings or legal tax maneuvers that his accountants use that make his income appear lower or show losses.

Some tax specialists see no legitimate reason for Mr. Trump to hold back. “When you file your return with the I.R.S. or any taxation authority you are filing your returns under penalty of perjury that what you are filing is true and correct,” said Laurie B. Kazenoff, a former I.R.S. tax lawyer now with the firm Meltzer Lippe. “You should be standing by what you filed regardless of any audit.”

(h/t New York Times)

Reality

While there is no legal requirement for a presidential candidate to release their tax returns, there is 40 years of unbroken precedent.

Despite telling conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt in February 2015, Trump could absolutely release those returns now – even in the middle of an audit.

The IRS has corrected this false claim: “Federal privacy rules prohibit the IRS from discussing individual tax matters. Nothing prevents individuals from sharing their own tax information.”

While an audit could result in a change (or two) to his returns, it does not change what Trump filed, signing “Under penalties of perjury, I declare that I have examined this return and accompanying schedules and statements, and to the best of my knowledge and belief, they are true, correct, and complete.” In other words, no matter how what happens as a result of the audit, what Trump submitted, he did so claiming that it was true at the time. If the IRS makes an adjustment (which happens, even with the best prepared returns), it shouldn’t substantially change the nature of the returns. And if the IRS makes no adjustment, then there was no harm, no foul, in releasing those returns. Trump could release those returns at any time.

Media

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gAoOUXVIq4

Donald Trump Received a Tax Break For People Who Make Less Than $500,000 a Year

Trump waves off questions from car

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has never been shy about claiming a flair for moneymaking.

But his tax returns, which he has refused to release, may tell a different story.

Crain’s New York reports that the New York real estate developer and self-described deca-billionaire claimed a a New York state property-tax benefit reserved for individuals and couples earning $500,000 a year or less. The New York State School Tax Relief program, otherwise known as STAR, was first instituted in 1997, and offers a mere $300 annual tax break to those who qualify.

According to Crain’s, records filed with New York City’s Department of Finance indicate that Trump received a $302 STAR benefit on his latest property-tax bill for his penthouse unit at Trump Tower. “That means whatever his annual income is, it’s less than $500,000,” Crain’s reported. “And Trump would have to have declared his New York apartment as his primary residence and sent the state a copy of his federal income-tax return in order to quality for the $302 tax break.”

Trump’s campaign claims the benefit was “an error on the party of the city of New York,” and that the candidate has been receiving the benefit since 2012, even though he hadn’t filed for it since 2009. The Department of Finance denies this, saying it confirms recipients’ income with New York state tax authorities every year to ensure STAR applicants continue to qualify.

Links

http://qz.com/634479/donald-trump-received-a-tax-break-for-people-who-make-less-than-500000-a-year/

Trump Won’t Release Tax Returns, Citing IRS Audit

After weeks of GOP presidential debates without any real tax talk (you can read about the last one here), the candidates finally got around to talking about tax. Only this time, instead of focusing on tax proposals, the candidates focused on tax returns. Specifically, tax returns belonging to Donald Trump: Trump has resisted calls to release his returns.

Prior to the debate, previous GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney called for Trump to release his returns, hinting there might be a “bombshell” in those returns, telling Fox News:

I think there’s something there. Either he’s not anywhere near as wealthy as he says he is or he hasn’t been paying the kind of taxes we would expect him to pay, or perhaps he hasn’t been giving money to the vets or to the disabled like he’s been telling us he’s doing.

In the hours before the debate, Romney renewed his call for Trump to release his returns , tweeting:

You might think that Trump – who will clearly have a tax return at least as complicated as Mitt Romney’s 203 page return – has a similar excuse.

He does not.

Trump claims that he wants to release his tax returns but he cannot – because he is being audited. Trump said, about the return, “As far as my return, I want to file it. I will absolutely give my return but I’m being audited now.” He went on to add that “everybody” would agree that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) should complete its audit of the returns before Trump releases the returns.

Trump also suggested that the agency has audited him repeatedly because of his faith.

“Well, maybe [it’s] because of the fact that I’m a strong Christian, and I feel strongly about it and maybe there’s a bias,” Trump said in an interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo after the debate.

The IRS denied that taxpayers are audited because of their religion.

“The IRS stresses that audits of tax returns are based on the information contained on the taxpayer’s return and the underlying tax law — nothing else. Politics and religion do not factor into this,” its statement said. “The audit process is handled by career, non-partisan civil servants, and we have processes in place to safeguard the exam process.”

In May 2016, Donald Trump met with the Associated Press where he explained despite pressure, the billionaire said he doesn’t believe he has an obligation to release his tax returns and won’t release them before November unless an ongoing audit of his finances is completed before Election Day. He said he wouldn’t overrule his lawyers and instruct them to release his returns if the audit hasn’t concluded by then.

“Now, I hope it gets finished soon. And if it gets finished soon, I put it out immediately because there’s nothing there. But until you get finished, you won’t,” he said.

(h/t Forbes, Associated Press)

Reality

While there is no legal requirement for a presidential candidate to release their tax returns, there is 40 years of unbroken precedent.

Despite telling conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt in February 2015, Trump could absolutely release those returns now – even in the middle of an audit.

The IRS has corrected this false claim: “Federal privacy rules prohibit the IRS from discussing individual tax matters. Nothing prevents individuals from sharing their own tax information.”

While an audit could result in a change (or two) to his returns, it does not change what Trump filed, signing “Under penalties of perjury, I declare that I have examined this return and accompanying schedules and statements, and to the best of my knowledge and belief, they are true, correct, and complete.” In other words, no matter how what happens as a result of the audit, what Trump submitted, he did so claiming that it was true at the time. If the IRS makes an adjustment (which happens, even with the best prepared returns), it shouldn’t substantially change the nature of the returns. And if the IRS makes no adjustment, then there was no harm, no foul, in releasing those returns. Trump could release those returns at any time.

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