Oh yeah, this wasn’t explosive at all and paints Trump in a relatively good light. I think it was probably leaked by Trump or someone close to Trump, and there was a reason that it was only the summary of one hand-picked year.
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Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
And this is exactly how we take the House back. Yes, republicans, take down your most coherent leaders and replace them with spittle filled rage monsters, by all means do that! Burn civilization just to upset someone who wants you to have healthcare, carry on!!! I’m going out for more popcorn. This is awful, and will be awful for a while, but the long run looks better every day, from here.
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yeah, we still don’t know where one dollar of that money came from.
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This. Finally, someone said it. Why 2005? Because it was a special year, in which there were two very big deals so the cover tax form made him look flush with money.
Remember, losses that are so big they create a net income loss for the year are carried over, with a certain amount being able to be written off each year until they’re gone. For someone like Trump, writing off the myriad losses is probably done on a FIFO basis (first in, first out) to keep track of when losses from, say, 2000 are finally fully written off and then the losses from 2001 can start.
That’s my guess as to why AMT kicks in for him: he has mostly losses, so every year his “net income” is too low.
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The most profitable thing Republicans can do these days is run for high office.
I think he wanted the loss and the book deal, more than the office.
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Ryan is so spineless, he’ll take no damage. I could see him shrugging it off like a boneless chicken.
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That doesn’t matter in the slightest to be very blunt. It is the 2005 return. He could have gotten it from anywhere that year. He was not running for President at that time, nor did he hold any political office.
Now his 2015/16 Tax returns are FAR MORE important for that given that the money he claims as earnings would have directly aided his campaign finance.
And yes, past returns can and in his case most likely show a pattern of income sources that are questionable as well as a pattern of under paying taxes based on earnings; but those are not crimes per say. Duplicitous and underhanded certainly, but not necessarily criminal.
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but…
Fence sitting looks just like that. I have no idea what standards you hold for him. It could probably matter, but it doesn’t.
That’s very clear? He’s the leader of the free world. Do we have standards?
A journalist pretty much has to release the information, and do their level best to interpret it for the public.
That said, we never know what piece of information will prove to be the lynchpin for the next step in the investigation. Somewhere, there’s a Lisbeth Salander out there digging into 45’s Russian ties. If this release provides the breadcrumb, or even the inspiration for, finding evidence that Trump was laundering money for the Russian mob, then that’s enough.
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We do have standards. The point would be legally speaking the source of his income over 10 years ago in one return wouldn’t establish a pattern of malfeasance. So knowing the source for this one return doesn’t matter.
The point here is we shouldn’t be looking at one return…we should be seeing all of them. Eye on the ball here.
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Completely agree with that, Eye on the ball.
If Trump paid a lot in taxes, the trumpers will say, “See, he pays his fair share”. If he pays little or nothing, they will say, “See how smart he is, to legally pay nothing”.
That’s the thing about trumpers; you can’t reason with them. They are like the Terminator. They don’t feel logic or remorse or pity. “That’s what he does! That’s ALL he does!”
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Apparently if he wants to make official and verifiable, he can fill out a form 8821 for that year:
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Especially as Trump put that spin out ahead of the story. I’ll reference this episode again in this conversation, but in the You Are Not So Smart podcast on the blowback effect, he talks about how once the idea is introduced, even if it’s wrong, it’s really hard to walk back the false idea in someone’s mind. So, getting that story out early was important to his constituents.
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It’s a great book and a great pod cast that I tend to binge on.
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Pretty much that kind of stuff was my college major - Cognitive Studies.
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Seems pretty clear to me what’s happening. Trump leaks his 2005 return because that’s a good year and was before the Russians started using him to launder money. Now he can say we have his tax returns and he doesn’t have to cough up the ones from the run up to the election. Good move Trump.
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