In late September of this year, The New York Times dropped a rather dubious article regarding President Donald Trump and his tax receipts/returns over the past four years. In the piece, “The President’s Taxes: Long-concealed Records Show Trump’s Chronic Losses and Years of Tax Avoidance,” the Times poured over years of President Trump’s tax history, and discovered, among other things, that in both 2016 and 2017 he only paid $750 in income tax, reported large net losses in the previous ten years before that, and that he is engaged in a legal battle with the IRS over a tax refund he received. Regardless of where your opinion stands on the current commander-in-chief, there is no doubt that the optics of this do not look good for the President. I am not here to debate the morality or PR of the situation; however, there are many key takeaways from the records that may show that this “bombshell” report from the Times may be a bit of an oversell.
A very crucial detail missing from the piece is any mention of Trump’s taxes being illegal . In fact, in the title of the piece, the Times used the phrase “tax avoidance,” a non-criminal charge, as opposed to “tax evasion,” which indicates felony wrongdoing. Without the critical characterization of his tax activity being illegal, President Trump’s actions are not unheard of among many upper-class Americans across the country; after all, who would pay more than they are legally required to? Former Secretary of State John Kerry, for example, docked his yacht in Rhode Island rather than his home state of Massachusetts, saving him about $500,000 in taxes; that is until public pressure mounted, and he sold it in 2016. Speaking of Massachusetts, residents of that state can choose to pay more in taxes than they are legally required, something Senator Elizabeth Warren opted not to do. As expected, few, if any, residents of that state have taken up that offer. The point of tax lawyers, preparers, and accountants for personal income is to enable a person to pay as little tax as the law allows. If you do not like the tax law, you can petition to change it, but you cannot expect people not to take advantage of loopholes that are already in place. I personally don’t think that tax loopholes make good law, and I am also of the opinion that high taxation is not good, so it makes sense to me and many other conservatives and libertarians that people want to pay as little in taxes as possible, even if legal loopholes are the method to do so.
The other crucial misstep this piece seems to make is that this evidence may dissuade some of Trump’s key supporters or the swing voters he needs to secure a second term. A Pew Research poll conducted July-August of 2020 regarding the issues that matter among registered voters show that 79% of voters state the economy as their top issue, followed closely with 68% stating heath care, and 64% stating Supreme Court appointments. There is very little correlation between these issues and President Trump’s taxes, as his taxes would be more conducive to forming an opinion on his personality rather than his policies. Most people have a solidified opinion of President Trump as a person, and that is not likely to change over the release of his tax returns.
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