Trump paid just $750 in federal income taxes in 2016, 2017 – according to an investigation by the New York Times
Donald Trump, a self-proclaimed billionaire, had reportedly paid only $750 in federal income taxes in the year that he was elected the president of the United States, according to a New York Times investigation that could potentially shake up the US presidential election.
“Trump taxes show chronic losses and years of tax avoidance,” was the headline on the New York Times’ website on Sunday. The president’s tax returns have long been of interest to those within American political reporting.
Donald Trump “paid $750 in federal income taxes the year he won the presidency”, the newspaper reported, adding that “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.”
In all, the paper said, Trump paid no federal income taxes in 11 of 18 years its reporters examined. Many of his businesses, including his golf courses, report significant financial losses – which have helped him to lower his taxes.
This comes after, in the UK, face masks and other face coverings will become mandatory for bar staff, shop workers and waiters, as well as taxi drivers in an effort to fight the increase in cases of the coronavirus throughout England, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced.
The Times also said the documents it had obtained “comprise information that Mr Trump has disclosed to the IRS, 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.”
He said: “We went through the same stories, you could have asked me the same questions four years ago, I had to litigate this and talk about it.”
“Totally fake news, no. Actually I paid tax.”
“And you’ll see that as soon as my tax returns – it’s under audit, they’ve been under audit for a long time. The [Internal Revenue Service] does not treat me well … they treat me very badly. You have people in the IRS – they treat me very badly.”
The president added: “The New York Times tried it, the same thing, they want to create a little bit of a story. They’re doing anything they can. That’s the least of it. The stories that I read are so fake, they’re so phony.”
This comes after the UK could soon be seeing 49,000 new cases of COVID-19 every day unless further action is taken in order to drive down the current rate of infection in the country, according to the government’s chief scientific adviser.
Pressed on why a billionaire only paid a few hundred dollars in the year he won the presidency, Trump insisted: “First of all I paid a lot, and I paid a lot of state income taxes too. The New York state charges a lot and I paid a lot of money in state. It’ll all be revealed. It’s going to come out but after the audit.”
