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Muftic: Trump’s tax dodge

Felicia Muftic
My View

The New York Times was slipped a 1995 personal tax filing of Donald Trump’s and the paper printed it.

Since Trump has refused to make his tax returns public, or the next 18 years worth either, the leaked returns leave us with a lot of questions , speculation and a gliimpse into his character and priorities He is his own priority since his tax proposals benefit him and he is proud he pays no personal income taxes, while most of the rest of us do,

The 1995 filings show nearly a billion dollara loss and a loophole only those big investors in real estate can use, one that could possibly save him from paying personal income taxes from then until at least now. He has not disputed that he has paid no income taxes, but instead he said in the first presidential debate, it was just proof of how smart he was His surrogates, including Rudy Guiliani, went a bit farther, calling him a” genius”..



The question is: how does this help the middle clase and rust belt workers? He says “trust him; he will fix it” because he knows the tax code so well. While what Trump did may not have been illegal, he should not be let off the hook so easily. Hillary Clinton’s best line Oct. 3: “That’s putting the fox in charge of the hen house door”.

1. The most damning part of the returns was revealing that that he lost a billion in that one year which was the same year there was a boom in real estate. What sort of a business man is that? If he is so smart, why not prove it by releasing his other tax returns . He should now be eager to prove that he is so smart. Or maybe it might show that he used the loophole in subsequent years. So long as he fails to release his tax filings, we will never know.



If he claims that he has the fiduciary responsibility to investors and his family by using tax loopholes to reduce costs and maximize profits, then a loss of a billion hardly shows responsibility to investors or his own family. What it does show he truly made whopping bad judgment calls in that particular year.

2. He should be pinned down on whether he would roll back the same tax loophole that could benefit him for the next 18 years. He has a huge conflict of interest in this one. Will the real estate loss carried forward still be permitted in his “reforms”? That is the specific loophole which allows him to avoid paying personal taxes for the years following the loss he claimed. So far that loophole is not included in this tax reform plans. The tax system may be rigged but he has not plans to change that particular rigging.

3. By not putting his Trump, Inc. investments into a blind trust that fits any standard definition, as he is proposing to do , he will still be benefitted in his post presidency, assuming by how well his children run his business. . . Talk about a conflict of interest, this is truly epic.

4..His “modified” flat tax proposal would still make the 1 pecent even richer. His proposed reduction to a 15 percent cap on capital gains taxes is no guarantee that the middle class would benefit because there is no mechanism to force any trickle down. It depends upon whether reducing capital games does stiumulate the economy, a debatable theory which has not played out in modern history. Middle class folks without millions to invest would see no direct benefits, but those who have looked at it agree Donald Trump and his family and others like him would gain much.

For more visit http://mufticforumblog.blogspot.com/.


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