DISPATCHES FROM MOON OF ALABAMA, BY "B"
This article is part of an ongoing series of dispatches from Moon of Alabama
Lots of pages have been filled with rumors about President Trump's income tax filings. The Democrats had hoped that they would reveal criminal behavior or at least prove that Russia had illegitimate influence over him:
Trump says his tax returns reveal nothing that is not already disclosed on his official candidate financial disclosure, called Form 278e. As ethics counsels to the past two presidents, we dealt with both their tax filings and their Form 278's and so we know that Trump is wrong. His tax filings have an enormous amount of additional information which, in this case, could be critically important to determining whether his business overseas might affect his decision-making as president. That is because Trump’s 12,000-page tax return may tell us a great deal about his Russian and other foreign business ties that is not on his 104-page campaign financial disclosure. It’s now more vital than ever that we get that information in light of Trump's embrace of Russian hacking, leaking and interference in our election.
Now the New York Times has obtained Trump's tax filings. It has made a huge splash out of them.
The story starts with this:
Donald J. Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes the year he won the presidency. In his first year in the White House, he paid another $750.
He had paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years — largely because he reported losing much more money than he made.
However, down in paragraph 78(!) it reports:
Mr. Trump was periodically required to pay a parallel income tax called the alternative minimum tax, created as a tripwire to prevent wealthy people from using huge deductions, including business losses, to entirely wipe out their tax liabilities.
Mr. Trump paid alternative minimum tax in seven years between 2000 and 2017 — a total of $24.3 million, excluding refunds he received after filing.
Reading the details of the 11,000 (!) words story one finds that it is largely a bummer for the 'resistance', not so much for Trump.
It essentially says:
- Trump is a quite rich international real estate investor.
- U.S. tax laws allow investors to minimize their reported income by claiming various kinds of depreciations and other gimmicks.
- Tax regulations that allows investors to carry forward leftover losses to reduce taxes in future years is especially helpful.
- Trump has good accountants and tax lawyers and has used the laws to their full extent to minimized his tax payments.
Is any of the above something we did not already knew?
What the Times story does NOT say is:
- Trump's tax record reveal that he did something illegal.
The paper had surely hoped for more. It must have been especially bitter for its authors to write this paragraph:
By their very nature, the filings will leave many questions unanswered, many questioners unfulfilled. They comprise information that Mr. Trump has disclosed to the I.R.S., not the findings of an independent financial examination. They report that Mr. Trump owns hundreds of millions of dollars in valuable assets, but they do not reveal his true wealth. Nor do they reveal any previously unreported connections to Russia.
This is a dud. It is certainly not the campaign ammunition the Democrats had hoped for.
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"b" is Moon of Alabama's founding (and chief) editor. This site's purpose is to discuss politics, economics, philosophy and blogger Billmon's Whiskey Bar writings. Moon Of Alabama was opened as an independent, open forum for members of the Whiskey Bar community. Bernhard )"b") started and still runs the site. Once in a while you will also find posts and art from regular commentators. You can reach the current administrator of this site by emailing Bernhard at MoonofA@aol.com. 
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
COMMENTS SAMPLER
Is anybody really surprised that the so called trump opposition in Washngton (AKA the swamp that trump claimed he would eliminate) engineered the revelation of trump's taxes just before the election and once again it turns out to be a giant nothing burger that benefits trump.
The deep state will manage to get trump elected one way or another.
Posted by: jinn | Sep 28 2020 11:54 utc | 1
Well, the big Q is - what sets him aside form others presidents - they disclosed - what makes him different ??????????
Posted by: Dan | Sep 28 2020 12:13 utc | 2
I look forward to the father, or son, Sulzberger to be charged similarly as Julian Assange. Preferably with even more charges. At least Chelsea Manning was a whistle blower. The NY Times' informant was operating on purely political motives. I know it falls under things that will never happen.
Jinn: Totally agree. Trump is the necessary villain for the American Color Flag Revolution.
Posted by: Old and Grumpy | Sep 28 2020 12:20 utc | 3
Guess how surprised I'm not that Trump, a reputed billionaire, conducted his business affairs in such a way as to minimise his tax obligations - just like EVERY Billionaire on the planet?
This pro-billionaire tax regime is central to the Neo-Liberal agenda of the 1970s. If anyone has the patience to troll through the tax scales of the 1950s and 1960s, in AmeriKKKa and the Rest Of The West, and compare the top bracket numbers therein to 21st Century tax scales it'll become VERY obvious that the most lucrative investment a Rich Person can make is to BUY as many "legislators" aka Politicians, as possible.
I recall that The Beatles became non-British to side-step Britain's Supertax, which obliged Brits with huge incomes to pay 99% tax on income in excess of (x) Million Pounds per year.
Allowing Rich folks, or anyone else, to bribe politicians should become, and remain, a crime punishable by death AND confiscation.
Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Sep 28 2020 12:32 utc | 4
Like UNZ Review, MofA is defending Trump from a "Color Revolution" apparently. Historians fifty years from now will look back at this period and wonder how a website that came into existence opposing the war on terror could easily mutate into the leftwing of Fox News.
Posted by: Louis N Proyect | Sep 28 2020 12:38 utc | 5
https://www.veteranstoday.com/2020/09/27/blockbuster-ny-times-publishes-trump-tax-returns-he-pays-nothing/
Uh-oh. Did the NYT pull a Comey on Biden?
/sarc
Posted by: M | Sep 28 2020 13:00 utc | 7
Surprise, surprise! See Sgt Carter, I told you Trump was allowed to take those deductions!
Posted by: morongobill | Sep 28 2020 13:04 utc | 8
Whether Trump did anything illegal or not isn’t clear. One strategy the NYT talks about is Trump funneling money to his children to duck taxes. So Ivanka worked directly for the company but then also took a big consulting fee which Trump wrote off his taxes. The Times notes such arrangements have been prosecuted before. Hasn’t Ivanka been on a personal responsibility and hard work kick lately for millions who’ve lost jobs this year? What a joke!
What is clear is that analysis by B totally glosses over the national security risk of this. Trump owes hundreds of millions of dollars (personally, not his company) to foreign lenders due in the next few years. Money he doesn't have and can't pay. If anyone in the world but Trump were president, Trump would not even be able to get a security clearance because that's such insane leverage foreign actors have over him.
Yes, real estate investors are able to write off expenses and get losses taken care of care of. Yes, rich people work to pay less tax. The capital class can do that and labor/working class can’t. I'm surprised no one is talking about how Trump and GOP loaded up the 2017 tax cut bill with sweeteners for real estate guys like himself. Dave Dayen has: https://prospect.org/api/amp/economy/private-equity-looting-r-us/?__twitter_impression=true
The fact that Trump GOT the $72 million refund in 2009 before the IRS figured out how insane that was illustrates the problem of the system created by both the paradigm of Ronald Reagan beginning in 1981 and the Dems operating within it.
And you’re wrong that this won’t have an effect. Trump’s bade doesn’t care. But independent voters do care. All public polling this year has shown Trump has lost support with non-college educated voters, seniors (no doubt due to a terrible COVID-19 response), and suburban voters especially suburban white women who have been fleeing to the Democrats since 2017.
Biden's call to eliminate step up in basis (see here: https://prospect.org/api/amp/power/david-koch-s-heirs-will-enjoy-biggest-tax-loophole-nobody-talks/?__twitter_impression=true ) would be one of the most consequential wealth taxs in the history of the U.S.A. his campaign has already started running ads showing how much working class people pay in federal income tax.
Posted by: Faazzla | Sep 28 2020 13:11 utc | 9
It is certainly not a secret that rich people, in America, pay little to no tax from their personal wealth. That honor is reserved for the peasantry, who have little to no personal wealth at all.
Posted by: Josh | Sep 28 2020 13:17 utc | 10
Well, b, NPR is selling this tax revelation as - guess what - a clear demonstration that the Strumpet is NOT the very wealthy, therefore not the successful, businessman that he claimed and claims...
One might have thought that they would raise doubts about those "losses" enabling his not having to pay taxes, or to pay much reduced ones...But no - they are clearly taking the 2016 tack, again, that he was anything but a wily, successful, very rich businessman. That his campaigning on being such a success at business was all a snow job...
They talk as though only paying minute sums in taxes is utterly unusual for rapacious, multi-million-billionaires. That obviously he hasn't the $$$ or the IRS would have taken him to the cleaners. I doubt that Bezos/Gates/Saban/Adelson et al pay anything approaching the sums they would were they not the Mammon worshiping greed-soaked arses that they are. That's why they employ these very expensive accountants, why they line the pockets of DC denizens, to ensure that they do not have to stump up anything close to what they would have back in 1950.
NPR really doesn't respect the intelligence of its audience; or it knows that most are of the anyone but variety (well, not anyone: must be Biden, which means will be Harris).
Doubtless they will also (and won't we all be shocked!) find Russia lurking in the wording of the tax records, somehow, somewhere...
Meanwhile, Congress - i.e. the Janus Party - can continue to ignore the ever increasing need of tens of millions of Americans for food and housing security and very low cost/free at point of service health care. As well as always finding inconceivable sums of moolah for the MIC on a yearly basis in order to satisfy the clearly deep desire of the US ruling elites (among whom many in Congress belong) to destroy other peoples, societies, ways of life in order to ensure, to demonstrate our self-decided right to rule the world...
Posted by: Anne | Sep 28 2020 13:17 utc | 11
Louis N Proyect@5 Moon of Alabama is no more left wing than you are. Also, you who advocated the extermination of the Alawis in order to destroy a more or less secular national state so that Islamic State, al Qaeda, etc. could set up confessional statelets, are to the right of Moon of Alabama on your best days.
As to this post, Trump has either been a gigantic liar about being a successful businessman, which means the poster endorses such flagrant dishonesty. Or, Trump has been successful and has simply falsified his tax reports, genuine crimes, escaping prosecution because of the IRS being underfunded precisely so that it can't trap rich scofflaws, or simply because of political connections. This likelihood is of course unthinkable to the original post. The real thrust of the OP is that, it's all legal. This is cheap cynicism, not realism. Quite aside from the simple, unpalatable fact that what is legal is not necessarily right, the true corruption of a system is measured by what is legal but immoral. The thing about this, what makes the OP just more Trumpery, is that what the Bidens did, what the FISA court did, what the Clintons did, is no more illegal than what Trump has admitted to. The double standard doesn't excuse Trump, it merely indicts the post.
Posted by: steven t johnson | Sep 28 2020 13:25 utc | 12
Old and Grumpy @3 wrote:
Trump is the necessary villain for the American Color Flag Revolution
So your theory is that they are working hard to get trump reelected so that they can depose him?
If the goal was to depose trump wouldn't it just be easier to make Biden win?
Posted by: jinn | Sep 28 2020 13:43 utc | 13
I have not read Proyect's specific statement of that, although a good chunk of the left on Syria found ways of supporting Islamist reaction and CIA-backed forces by passing it off as the Arab Spring.
I do remember a mainstream journalist in the British press some years back noting that Syrian Christians tended to back Assad because of fear of the Sharia state on offer by the other side. His or her response to this was that the Christians should get with the programme and abandon Assad, or on their heads be it...
Posted by: Waldorf | Sep 28 2020 14:05 utc | 14
"..The real thrust of the OP is that, it's all legal. This is cheap cynicism, not realism." @12
It is simply a fact. These tax strategies are, generally, 'legal.' And they are so because the legislature is controlled by wealth determined to protect itself from the populace.
That is the real story of these tax returns-not that Trump is a rogue businessman, an unusual example of wealth combined with social irresponsibility, but that he is a typical member of his class which is in the business of stealing wealth from the people and refusing to share it with government.
To point these things out is not to defend Trump, as Johnson suggests, but to indict a class: Capitalism is immoral. Not, in the narrow sense, illegal, but wrong.
The New York Times, by the way appears to be owned by foreigners including the Mexican tycoon Slim whose fortune is founded on the privatisation of telecommunications, whether this means that the newspaper is a 'security risk' is doubtful, like the idea (Faazlaa@9) that Trump is unusual in that he borrows from 'foreign' sources it is really irrelevant. The biggest security risks in the USA are those with the highest security clearance.
Grown-ups will realise that nothing is gained by insisting that Trump is uniquely or even unusually immoral, he is a fairly typical representative of a class which has been ruling the USA for most of its history- the differences between him and Biden, Clinton or Obama are merely superficial. And those who insist otherwise, supporting the Democrats in the Presidential election are clearly insisting that the grip of the ruling class on power should not be disturbed.
What 'b' is pointing out are hard truths. It is a matter of interest that no politician in the USA has played a more prominent part in preserving and extending tax evasion regimes than the long time Senator from Delaware, whose entire career has been underwritten by the sleaziest elements of the Financial industry.
Posted by: bevin | Sep 28 2020 14:08 utc | 15
And what wrote the NYT on Biden? Little, just that a panel could not find evidence that Joe was not directly involved in his son Hunter's wheeling and dealing in Ukraine and PR China. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/23/us/elections/a-republican-inquiry-into-hunter-biden-and-ukraine-finds-no-evidence-of-wrongdoing-by-his-father.html
Zero mention of the new docu. on Biden's Chinese financiers called "Riding the Dragon", free viewable on Youtube (41 min): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRmlcEBAiIs
Posted by: Antonym | Sep 28 2020 14:15 utc | 16
Any thinking person knew that Trump's tax returns would not disclose anything illegal. After all, the returns were not "secret" to the IRS, and had there been anything illegal to disclose, I'm sure all the potential leakers in the IRS knew they'd be taken care of for life by the Dems if they leaked it. However, nothing illegal means no reward, and no potential protection as a "whistleblower," so the fact that nothing was leaked over these last few years made it clear there was no there there.
The reason for the resistance to disclosing was mainly an ego thing for Trump, because of course to minimize taxes--like every single millionaire and billionaire in the US does--means maximizing losses, and the tax man is the only one a rich businessman ever wants to brag about his losses and failures to. But of course this will be blown entirely out of proportion for as long as possible, especially since it can serve as a distraction from the mind-boggling enrichment and influence schemes the Dims (and particularly Biden & Son) were neck deep in throughout Eastern Europe and China.
Posted by: J Swift | Sep 28 2020 14:18 utc | 17
@13 jinn
The concept that the Democrats would be more happy in #2 position than actually winning the election doesn't require any coordinated conspiracy to give it substance.
The Democrats have a great job. They make money from the insider trading that Congress retained as legal for itself (speaking of things that are "legal" versus "wrong"), as well as corporate sponsorship.
If they don't control the Houses then they don't have to attempt to advance an agenda. They don't have to explain to their traditional supporters why they no longer represent any part of their traditional platform, why they are simply corporate shills with no philosophy anmymore. They don't have to do things to help the people or the nation, they can just blame the Republicans and wring their hands.
It's a sweet gig for them. No one really would have to explain to any of them, individually or combined, that they will have to step up their narrative if they get in the driver's seat. They make easier money as complicit second-raters following along with the corporate agenda driven by the Republicans.
They are the straight man for the comedian, and it pays well. May the circus continue to sell tickets for another season, is the only prayer on the Hill.
If I had lied my way onto a seat in the house, I would understand all that without being told.
Posted by: Grieved | Sep 28 2020 14:30 utc | 18
Is the US actually a country? is it a nation at all or is just a conglomerate of business interests hiding as a country?
Well some obscure US president (candidate) characterised Russia as a Gas station with nuclear powers, I will characterise the US as an asylum for the insane, infested with brain damage and abundant covid-19 as a hell-hole, where the lunatics in this world chose to congregate. Now they have about 7500 nuclear warheads, so war is a no-go, but maybe the covid 19 is the solution...
Posted by: Den lille Abe | Sep 28 2020 14:43 utc | 19
Frankly, this is the most boring thing you could have written about, b, except for more Covfefevirus stuff. Whether Trump "wins" or "loses" - and the selection of a corrupt, senile, war criminal sleazeball to stand against him suggests that he's been chosen to win - his so called tax returns won't have a damn thing to do with it. Those who are convinced he's a tax cheat Russian agent will stay convinced. Those who imagine he's god's anointed protector of the zionist entity and (a distant second to such people) America will stay convinced. Nobody will even read that article beyond the first ten lines. And the authors undoubtedly knew that.
Posted by: Biswapriya Purkayast | Sep 28 2020 14:45 utc | 20
Trump certainly had nothing to do with Russia, and probably didn't do anything illegal.
However, it is clear he's not a "deplorable" either; he's a born and bred American oligarch.
The NYT also shoots itself on the foot, because, if it somehow insists on this, it will do more harm to the American Empire's image than to Trump; it will expose even more the Empire's regressive and utterly unfair taxation system. It will expose the Democrat elite as much as it will expose the Republican elite.
Posted by: vk | Sep 28 2020 14:49 utc | 21
@5 Louis Proyect.
That's rich coming from someone who calls Kevork Almassian a "fascist" and denies the jihadi headchoppers controlled the invasion of Syria from the beginning.
Posted by: Biswapriya Purkayast | Sep 28 2020 14:51 utc | 22
Thanks to b, and to Grieved for an acceptable alternative to the mainstream narrative of two candidates eager to defeat one another, two parties also. Back in the day we thought the Republican Party was doomed; but then we saw that the Democratic Party extended lifelines by behaving as badly and worse, in order to keep that party from taking its place in history. Like corporations, parties are immortal. Especially when, like corporations, they have sent out tendrils into every aspect of functioning democracy. The question is, how to cut back or unwind those tendrils? It doesn't seem possible in the forseeable future, but if enough ordinary people start to work on it, perhaps it can be done.
There are such vines in my garden. They loop around every productive plant or shrub. But today the signs of winter are visibly increasing, and they will die. The time for parties may be coming to a close - with the financial largesse they are accustomed to fizzling out as the nothingburger it will prove to be.
Then we can compost them both.
Posted by: juliania | Sep 28 2020 14:55 utc | 23
This is a dud my ass! Trump looked real uncomfortable at yesterday's presser, and quickly moved to pick friendly reporters to avoid the tax topic.
I mistakenly posted the following on the wrong thread; I thought I was posting on the Open Thread, but since Trump's troubles got their own thread, here goes.:
Imagine Trump spending $70,000 on 10 thin blond-dyed strands when he's got so much debt pending?
I wonder if the butcher MBS lent him money? HA! Partners in crime! He's so dirty.
Hey, but what's good for Russia, Israel and Saudi Arabia is good for the rest of the world i.e. 200,000+ dead Americans' families grieving their unnecessary deaths, millions unemployed, dissenters for rights crushed by martial oppression; usurping the judiciary; increasingly wielding fascist tools to cling to power and on the foreign front to hell with his hostile meddling against Palestine, Iran, China and Venezuela as long as Putin, Yahoo and MBS are happy. Keep trying to put lipstick on this pig!
Can't wait for Trump's messy free fall.
Posted by: Circe | Sep 28 2020 15:01 utc | 24
Would put it in the open thread, but, on a second thought, it is more related to this one:
Gallup: Americans Tend to Trust Only News That Confirms Their Beliefs; Highly Educated Americans Are by Far the Most Closed-Minded Group
This confirms the dialectical materialist conception of information, which, in a class-based society, always manifests itself in the synthetic form of propaganda.
There's an old saying that states "you can fool some people for a long time or you can fool many people for a short time, but you can't fool a lot of people for a long time".
That saying is wrong: in a society divided by class, you can fool a lot of people for a very long time - as long as it is politically expedient to this group's class interests. People will conscientiously believe in a lie if that lie is materially sustainable and it benefits them (individually and, on a social level, as a class). Adults can and do lie to advance their own interests, daily: they lie to their kids, they lie to their spouses, they lie to their bosses, they lie to their colleagues. And they only tell the truth when it convenes them - this is what separates the children (who can't lie, at the risk of ultimate punishment from their parents) and adults (who live in the public sphere, therefore a world without rules). That's the dialectic of information and reason: it is always politics; if you consider yourself non-ideological or non-political, you are being ideological and political.
Posted by: vk | Sep 28 2020 15:31 utc | 26
bevin@15 is wrong. The original post is not an indictment of the capitalist class and its tax privileges. It is a defense of Trump, anchored entirely on the claim the expose is another nothingburger, because, legal. Again, on the face of it, either Trump has been a liar about being a success, over and over again, yet the OP endorses this. Or, Trump falsified his tax reports, a criminal act. The conclusion is that it's not an indictment of capitalism but yet another failure of the Democrats, who are losers. The implication is Trump isn't.
Personally, I'm not ever going to vote against Trump, because there is no such thing as voting against. There's only voting for. I am opposed to everything Biden stands for, so I can't honestly vote for him. For those who want to talk about Trump the fascist? The Democratic Party does not oppose Trump for being a fascist, but for being insufficiently anti-Russian! That's official, that's why they impeached him. Pretending they are the peaceful version of Antifa is lie. What the OP has against the Democratic Party is that they're incompetents who've lied about Trump!
Posted by: steven t johnson | Sep 28 2020 15:32 utc | 27
Sorry, PS on "color revolutions." The essential first step to color revolutions is, making the claim the elections were rigged. The person doing that---before it happens!---is Trump. Everyone who babbles about color revolutions against Trump are calling black, white. It is about as likely that Tikhanovskaya actually won in Belarus, than Trump winning the vote now. Lurking behind all this is the continued lying about how Trump actually "won." Sorry, people, the belief that the letter of the law is right, is another version of "might makes right." This doctrine is suitable only for moral imbeciles.
Posted by: steven t johnson | Sep 28 2020 15:38 utc | 28
Most wealthy people game the system to pay as little tax as possible - they hire expensive lawyers who help them do this without it even being illegal. Trump is no exception. If he is unethical he is part of an entire system that is.
Posted by: Waldorf | Sep 28 2020 15:42 utc | 29
I'm not sure why the Gov't make us pay taxes any more anyway, it's been clear for a long time they don't rely on our taxes to pay for anything, they have lots of better ways to get cash when they need it.
Posted by: Bemildred | Sep 28 2020 15:45 utc | 30
The saying mentioned by vk is irrelevant in contested elections, even if true - while you can't fool all the people all the time, you don't need to do that - you need to fool enough to win an election.
Posted by: Waldorf | Sep 28 2020 15:46 utc | 31