The Times has scored some Trump tax information and found that he was basically setting fire to billions in the late 80s-early 90s.
By the time his master-of-the-universe memoir “Trump: The Art of the Deal” hit bookstores in 1987, Donald J. Trump was already in deep financial distress, losing tens of millions of dollars on troubled business deals, according to previously unrevealed figures from his federal income tax returns.
Mr. Trump was propelled to the presidency, in part, by a self-spun narrative of business success and of setbacks triumphantly overcome. He has attributed his first run of reversals and bankruptcies to the recession that took hold in 1990. But 10 years of tax information obtained by The New York Times paints a different, and far bleaker, picture of his deal-making abilities and financial condition.
…
The numbers show that in 1985, Mr. Trump reported losses of $46.1 million from his core businesses — largely casinos, hotels and retail space in apartment buildings. They continued to lose money every year, totaling $1.17 billion in losses for the decade.
In fact, year after year, Mr. Trump appears to have lost more money than nearly any other individual American taxpayer, The Times found when it compared his results with detailed information the I.R.S. compiles on an annual sampling of high-income earners. His core business losses in 1990 and 1991 — more than $250 million each year — were more than double those of the nearest taxpayers in the I.R.S. information for those years.
So he’s the best at something!
Boy, I bet his Twitter machine is going to melt by the time he’s finished raging about this one.
The new information also suggests that Mr. Trump’s 1990 collapse might have struck several years earlier if not for his brief side career posing as a corporate raider. From 1986 through 1988, while his core businesses languished under increasingly unsupportable debt, Mr. Trump made millions of dollars in the stock market by suggesting that he was about to take over companies. But the figures show that he lost most, if not all, of those gains after investors stopped taking his takeover talk seriously.
Isn’t that…how shall I put this…against the law? Fraudulent trading type of thing?
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14 responses to “In deep financial distress”
I certainly would think so.
My recollection is that this practice was/is known as “greenmailing,” and its legality was very much an open question in the 1980s/90s. In that respect, at least, Trump may not have been getting away with anything that many others didn’t get away with too.
I believe it’s less common an occurrence these days because the laws (including tax treatment) have been changed, and corporations have devised some defenses to these schemes.
One point that might be worth considering is how truthful Trump’s tax returns are. Since Trump lies about everything else, he may have lied to the IRS as well.
Well, talking about buying his own company back and affecting the share price got Musk in deep shit and a heavy fine.
My recollection of the details are hazy, but in his book, Stupid White Men, Michael Moore wrote about how some large corporations with annual turnovers in the billions of dollars could work the system by not only reporting zero profits or losses to avoid paying taxes, but actually managed to get millions of dollars from the IRS by exploiting loopholes in the U.S. tax laws. I would not be surprised to learn that the Trump Corp. was playing that game.
At one point, didn’t he brag about how he didn’t have to pay taxes for several years because of declaring bankruptcy? Of course, faking bankruptcy to avoid paying taxes would just endear him to his base more.
Oh yes…
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/10/us/politics/donald-trump-taxes.html
It never fails to amuse me that he managed to lose money (lots and lots and lots of it) running CASINOS. How is that even theoretically possible?
My dad lost a business in the early 70s. He was a mechanic who expanded into car sales, only to be severely hit by the three day week (the government’s response to reducing demand on electricity because of a miners strike) and his business partner consequently running away to Spain with a suitcase full of fifty pound notes.
Anyway, this is what my dad did. He paid what he could to the little people he owed money to. His employees first, then his small suppliers and so on before declaring bankruptcy. He knew this was bad financial practice, especially because the company had just built a big new building and he’d be stuck with paying off Capital Gains Tax for 30 years, which he subsequently was. He has struggled financially ever since, but has never regretted it for a moment because he did what was right for the people who needed it most. It didn’t occur to him to do anything differently.
I’m not saying my dad is an angel, he’s a monster in several respects. But compare and contrast with how Trump operates even on the rare occasions he isn’t declaring bankruptcy.
My own business currently employs only me and its biggest liability is my cat, Fortran. But if I were facing financial ruin and owed anyone anything, I’d definitely do what my dad did, even though I lived through those harsh consequences. Probably because I did. Again, not because I am an especially good or moral person but because it would be wicked to renege on my responsibilities to people who are also struggling.
This sort of thing is near the top of the very long list indeed of things I despise about Trump. Treating people as things holds the top spot, but treating responsibilities as other people’s problems is a close second.
‘Of course I claimed massive losses, it was to avoid paying taxes. It’s a game we all played back then’, says Donald.
Then, just because he’s Trump and can be nothing else, he followed up this confirmation of the reports with a swift about-turn and…
So the reports are correct and fake at the same time. Schrotrumpers news?
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-tax-returns-losses-avoid-business-response-a8904421.html
latsot, I had to file a medical bankruptcy in the 1990s because of a catastrophic illness that wiped me out. I didn’t owe much outside of the medical, but what I did owe, I paid. A little at a time, what I could, which wasn’t much because I was on disability and not working.
But then, I have a conscience.
@iknklast:
There you go again not making America great. By paying what you feel responsible for instead of taking down as many people as you possibly can to preserve your own quality of life.
Hang your head in shame.
latsot, I am deeply ashamed. I should self-flagellate.
Wherever I look these days, I see slipping standards: particularly amongst journalists. Do they not stress precision of language to cadet journalists any more?
The word ‘earners’ in the quoted passage should be replaced by the word ‘receivers.’ There is a difference: particularly in Trump’s case.