(05-08-2019 05:40 AM)Fort Bend Owl Wrote: Probably some rogue IRS employees got the returns and gave them to the Times. That's already happened with Michael Cohen.
Worst case scenario - they'll go to jail for a few years and then get pardoned with a Democratic president.
Probably exactly right. And IMO that is pretty awful.
Quote:You honestly feel making up the information is a possibility?
There are only two possibilities. Either somebody committed a very serious crime, or somebody made up numbers. I suspect the former is far more likely. Government bureaucrats get the idea that they are invincible, and that they can break the law with impunity. That belief needs to be corrected, or we will all be in trouble. But if nobody broke the law, then the only other possibility is made up numbers. We are in an era where Dan Rather thought it was perfectly acceptable ethically to forge a letter, because he just KNEW that there had to be a real one like it somewhere. So I wouldn't put it past the author. But I expect the far more likely possibility is a criminal act.
Quote:We already know tons and tons of major companies are manipulating the system about billions and billions dollars of profits. So why wouldn't Trump's company be claiming a billion dollar loss when twice as many companies are now paying zero corporate taxes as they did under Obama?
If you are suggesting that large companies are making things up to hide taxable income, then you are full of crap. They don't have to make things up, they do it all in the open. When we had corporate tax rates 20% higher than the rest of the world, they did it by moving the profitable parts of their businesses overseas to be taxed on those profits at lower rates. They didn't dodge taxes, they paid taxes, just not to the US. And the jobs they created to generate that taxable income were there, not here. If you follow economic trends, you will note that something like a billion people worldwide have been lifted out of poverty into the middle class, while the US middle class has been shrinking. There is a reason. After the 2017 act narrowed the gap between us and other countries, they have gotten to other tools, like stock compensation, to reduce taxes. But of course, we aren't looking at Trump's data after the 2017 act, so that would be irrelevant here. Interestingly, the stock compensation deduction arises out of a law that was enacted for the purpose of limiting top executive compensation. Be careful what you wish for in that area.
As for the suggestion about "Trump's company," you need to be educated on a few things. You're not stupid, but you are ignorant. For one thing, it's not "Trump's company," but rather a series of what I would expect to be a combination of limited partnerships, S Corps, and LLCs under which his organization does business. You do one or more enterprises for each deal, to keep them separate for liability purposes, and so failed deals (and everybody has them) can be bankrupted without impacting the other properties. And huge front end losses, followed by profits that are sheltered by the loss carry forwards, and ultimately selling the property at a significant capital gain, is the standard profile. That appears to be exactly what is happening here. It usually happens on a smaller scale, but given the magnitude of Trump's projects, the numbers aren't totally unexpected. I'm guessing you could go back to the packages offered to investors and find financial projections that track pretty closely with the results suggested. That's the way these deals get done, as tax shelters for those with money to shelter.
Quote:Another possibility is Chinese hackers are getting the information and leaking it in retribution for new tariffs. That seems a bit more unlikely, but I'm just throwing it out there.
I think that is highly unlikely but it is at least a possibility, along with, of course, "the Russians."
I'm no fan of Donald Trump, but I'm even less a fan of people putting out stupid stuff that makes no sense. We seem to have created a cottage industry in "Orange Man Bad," and I don't think that is appropriate.
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Trump Tax Figures Show Over $1 Billion in Business Losses
