Donald Trump declared a loss of nearly $1 billion on his 1995 income tax return, allowing him to legally avoid paying taxes for almost two decades, according to documents obtained by The New York Times, reports AFP from Washington. The revelations come after the outspoken Republican presidential candidate repeatedly refused to make his tax filings public, the first candidate to do so since Richard Nixon in the 1970s. The billionaire’s tax records show “the extraordinary tax benefits” that Trump derived “from the financial wreckage he left behind in the early 1990s through mismanagement of three Atlantic City casinos, his ill-fated foray into the airline business and his ill-timed purchase of the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan,” The Times said in its Sunday edition.
While Trump’s taxable income in the following years is unknown, “a $916 million loss in 1995 would have been large enough to wipe out more than $50 million a year in taxable income over 18 years,” the report said. The Times said it received the three pages of the tax returns via mail from an anonymous source, with a return address on the envelope as Trump Tower in New York, the real estate tycoon’s headquarters.
The newspaper said it verified the authenticity of the documents and had them reviewed by a tax expert.
Trump has never held political office, so the core of his campaign relies on his alleged acumen as a successful businessman.
The Trump campaign issued a statement that said nothing about the veracity of the report, and did not address the $916 million loss. “Mr Trump is a highly-skilled businessman who has a fiduciary responsibility to his business, his family and his employees to pay no more tax than legally required,” the statement said.
“That being said, Mr Trump has paid hundreds of millions of dollars in property taxes, sales and excise taxes, real estate taxes, city taxes, state taxes, employee taxes and federal taxes,” it added, giving no specifics.
The campaign attacked The Times as “an extension of the Clinton Campaign, the Democratic Party and their global special interests.” “BOMBSHELL,” wrote Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon on Twitter. “Trump’s returns show just how lousy a businessman he is AND how long he may have avoided paying any taxes.”
Soon after the news broke late Saturday, Trump appeared agitated and veered off message repeatedly at a rally in Manheim, Pennsylvania.
Trump showed up more than 1.5 hours late to the event, then repeatedly rambled off on tangents, talking about his now-canceled reality TV show “The Apprentice,” “crazy” Bernie Sanders, the “dopes at CNN,” “phony pundits,” and how Clinton “could actually be crazy,” The Washington Post reported. On Sunday Trump responded to The Times on Twitter, saying: “I know our complex tax laws better than anyone who has ever run for president and am the only one who can fix them.”