I don’t get the whole hullabaloo about the leaked Trump tax return. If he legally used a tax write-off, then what’s the problem? There is not a person on the planet who wouldn’t have used a tax write-off they are legally entitled to.
The Taxes Drama
Opinions, art, debate
Clarissa's Blog 
Well I think it’s a problem that the supposed genius business man lost nearly a billion dollars in one year.
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That I agree with completely. But the drama about the write-off is incomprehensible.
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It’s not ‘drama’, it’s politics. Right or wrong, it just doesn’t look good for a rich man who doesn’t pay taxes to have an outsized control over government, which is paid for by taxes. And because it doesn’t look good, it makes sense for Clinton to keep hammering away at this issue.
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As the recent Alicia Machado scandal demonstrated, people care about the strangest things and don’t care about really important stuff.
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True, but all one can do is to keep looking for issues to attack him and hope something sticks.
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That wasn’t new information.
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Like Evelina said, it’s more about the fact that he lost a billion dollars running a casino in one of the most booming economic eras in US history.
And yes, the anger should be directed not at him for taking the deductions, but for the tax policies that made it possible for people like him to do so. It’s almost as if the rich play by different rules.
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If one is extremely rich, there’s pretty much nothing they can do to stop being very rich. The money floats to the top. It’s not trickle down, it’s gushing upwards.
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Right now, the rich do play by different rules. However, some early comments indicate that he pushed the envelop on some of these deductions. Something that exceptionally large should have been subject to audit by the IRS, but was it? More importantly, did he manipulate buy/sell agreements to produce the loss? That’s something that most people can’t do, but the rich can.
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His ENTIRE raison d’être is that he’s a rich guy and that makes everything he does right or excuses his behavior.
If he used the tax write-off legally and the net operating losses are real, he is a spectacularly bad businessman because he lost money running casinos and owning New York real estate at a time when everybody else was making money hand over fist. Nincompoops got paid $50,000 a year because they knew how to code the blink in HTML. The economy was booming. New York real estate was exploding in price. And casinos make most of their money from heavy fliers/addicts who throw their money away.
If the net operating losses are massaged into a grey area or straight out lies, then it reeks for several reasons. First, the lies. He’s on record complaining about “third world airports” in this country that are funded by the same taxes he has gotten out of paying, and his party goes on about freeloaders who “don’t pay [federal income] tax.” He routinely goes on about crumbling infrastructure and his famous wall, which is basically a giant construction project.
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I’ll offer a more useful and direct proposition …
Would you rather someone who can succeed in creative financial engineering work for your benefit or for someone else’s?
Essentially this is the question now being put before the American public.
During the Scottish independence referendum, a Scot asked me why I would be in favour of the Scottish going their own way. I said that if Scotland were to offer tax haven advantages, plenty of City money would flee London and take up residence in Scotland.
When that Scot wrinkled his nose at me about the idea of rich bankers stashing their loot in Scotland and voiced outright disapproval, I told him that this way those bankers would be under Scottish rule, working within Scottish regulations, and those funds would help support a Scottish banking sector that would provide capital support to Scottish independence. (Historically speaking, had this support been in place centuries before, the Scots would have never needed to join the Union in the first place.)
So Donald Trump’s a scumbag according to the Marquess of Queensbury rules for how to run a business, but wouldn’t you rather that scumbag be working for your benefit?
I don’t pay my solicitor because he’s a nice person, just so we’re clear on this concept.
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You’re just taking for granted that, although Trump is a scumbag, his policies would enrich Americans. This is such a flawed premise to begin with. Also, businesses are not run like countries. I’m not sure that scumbag tactics he used to torch wealth all around him while enriching himself, would be of any use in deciding national policy.
About half of the national debt is owned by Americans themselves. You’re suggesting the President negotiate with citizens to accept less money than what they’re owed? That’s their 401ks and retirements accounts, mind you.
I don’t even know where this Trump is a scumbag but a financial genius meme originated from? Seriously, with no proof, why would you expect a man with the attention span of a fruitfly to be knowledgeable about anything?
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“Seriously, with no proof, why would you expect a man with the attention span of a fruitfly to be knowledgeable about anything?”
-Especially since Trump’s accountant has stated that Trump really doesn’t have much knowledge of tax law. And he also has a prolonged history of blatantly ignoring the First Amendment and other laws meant to protect speech. He’s heavy-handed and willfully ignorant of both the law and contemporary history. Yet he claims to be intimately familiar with both.
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So Donald Trump’s a scumbag according to the Marquess of Queensbury rules for how to run a business, but wouldn’t you rather that scumbag be working for your benefit?
There is no evidence that that he would be working for anyone’s benefit other than his own. It assumes a level of trust and competence that frankly he has done nothing to demonstrate in over seven decades of living. There are no people coming forward to say that Trump made them a lot of money in a mutually beneficial deal, even as a side effect, to balance out the people who claimed he cheated them. And if people really wanted the benefit of creative financial engineering, they would consult Trump’s accountants [Mitnick for one], or his currently anonymous wealth managers, not Trump himself.
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“His ENTIRE raison d’être is that he’s a rich guy and that makes everything he does right or excuses his behavior.”
Absolutely. There is nothing else in there but the uncontrollable desire to self-enrich. The fellow even got his own campaign to pay for the unveiling of his new hotel! That’s what he’s all about.
I don’t know what damage one needs to suffer to conclude that Trump is capable of caring about anything but his bank account.
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There’s a bit-darker-than-grey area that involves using tax laws as a form of arbitrage in which you put investors, bankers, and the government at each other’s throats while pulling off as much liquid capital as you can during the collapse …
If anything, mastery of these techniques gives me some hope for America’s various national financial issues, including the “national debt” and current accounts deficits. Why pay back the “national debt” in full when you can simply stick it to some of the creditors who have been holding that debt?
You weren’t actually going to “pay retail” for all of that, were you?
More to the point, why should you? Iceland stuck it to the world good and hard, yet managed to get away with it … so now here’s your chance!
[… and if you can’t figure out how to lose a billion dollars of other people’s money while still coming out ahead yourself, well, as Malcolm X once said, you keep doing what you’re doing and you’ll get where you are …]
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Ah yes, using Greece and Argentina as role models for dealing with national debt.
“and if you can’t figure out how to lose a billion dollars of other people’s money while still coming out ahead yourself..”
This comment goes a long way to show how this line of attack may not work on certain sections of the society. I forget how much respect some people have for con-men and swindlers.
This guy probably worships Madoff, too.
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Do try to keep in mind that all indications are that Donald Trump employed legal means that were to his benefit, which is precisely the point that Clarissa made that started this conversation.
As for making further attempts at character assassination, also do try to keep in mind that I am not necessarily a “nice person” and that there are solutions to problems that I am willing to accept in lieu of something better. Trump is not the best that America can do, but a Trump presidency is a situation that I think that many Americans can live with, especially if he is using his techniques in business dealings for their benefit.
As for any swindling that’s been going on, I wonder how you’ve managed to swindle Clarissa into putting up with your ad hominem attacks for as long as she’s been doing …
Decorum does not permit me to write the three words that you genuinely deserve.
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“Decorum does not permit me..”
Good day to you, too, SIR!
Just for the record, ‘ad hominem’ doesn’t mean what you think it means. For example, calling you a pig-fucker isn’t ‘ad hominem’. Calling your argument wrong because you’re a pig-fucker is.
Continue with your pearl-clutching.
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“For example, calling you a pig-fucker isn’t ‘ad hominem’”
I forgot that this might not even be an insult for a Tory like you, given the recent revelations of your ex-PM doing just the same.
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Jones has been hacked!!
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It is the notion that Trump would work for America’s benefit that most people are finding hard to believe, Jones.
Evidence leads us to believe otherwise. Trump works for Trump, and no one else.
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“It is the notion that Trump would work for America’s benefit that most people are finding hard to believe”
The fellow spent 70 years ripping off everybody he clapped his eyes on for his own benefit. But now all of a sudden he’ll wake up and start looking out for me and you. Yes, totally realistic.
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To me this has nothing to do with an assessment of Trump’s character. I maintain that someone who lost nearly a billion dollars during an economically prosperous year is a buffoon who has no ability to manage our complex national economy.
The fact that Trump hired a lawyer who helped him find some loopholes to avoid a hefty tax burden isn’t remotely impressive to me. Trump is a bumbling pathetic reality star who was born into money and is only still rich because of glaring inequalities in the American tax structure. There is nothing impressive or even cagey about him. He is a sad and insecure little man who has no business being the president of one of the most powerful nations in the world.
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“I maintain that someone who lost nearly a billion dollars during an economically prosperous year is a buffoon who has no ability to manage our complex national economy.”
Thing is, even if he had made a trillion for himself, that would still not qualify him to manage the national economy. Micro and macroeconomy are different.
“He is a sad and insecure little man who has no business being the president of one of the most powerful nations in the world.”
I also think he’s not right in the head. And he probably has been unwell for at least a couple of decades. But this is the curse of being very rich: you don’t have to worry about inscribing yourself into social structures and your mental illness remains unchecked and untreated forever and ever. And things only get worse. Somebody with Trump’s disorder who needs to stay employed to make a living would have gotten this issue at least under some control a while ago. But since he’s rich, everybody panders to him and he never seeks treatment or gets himself under control.
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“Thing is, even if he had made a trillion for himself, that would still not qualify him to manage the national economy. Micro and macroeconomy are different.”
Oh I agree completely. But Trump’s entire platform revolves around the notion that he is some sort of business or financial genius. And the tax returns show that this supposed genius is an absolute myth.
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But Evelina, I fear that that is why people like him.
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The issue is that he probably didn’t lose his own money.. it could have been bonds that were parked offshore but not forgiven. Then he declared the loss and stop paying taxes. also.. he directed earned income into the fake charity and reported only capital gains..
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LOL – speaking of taxes (which the Supreme Court once ridiculously called the ObamaCare mandate):
Hillary’s number-one supporter Bill, campaigning hard for his wife today in Michigan, told a roomful of voters that ObamaCare is “a crazy system that doesn’t work.”
Maybe a Clinton can inadvertently tell the truth, after all. 🙂
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I’m sure it’s taken completely out of context for strange purposes.
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Actually, it’s not. Just past-his-prime Bill being his usual “helpful” self for his wife’s campaign. (If the link doesn’t work, take my unbiased word for it.)
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I am guessing he is trying to address the situation. The fact is that the healthcare plan as it was finally allowed to exist is not all that great. This isn’t because universal healthcare isn’t a good idea, etc., it is because of how this thing was structured. My bet is he is saying HRC will work to improve it. I think the public option is already off the table for her, though, so improvements will be very, very “incremental.”
Here in Louisiana, they got rid of public health care at the same time as the ACA came in. The ACA is worse and more expensive than what we had. Getting rid of what we had at the state level wasn’t (at least not officially) something done because ACA was coming in (we also weren’t accepting Medicaid expansion at the time) … but the real effect was that people who had had a certain level of healthcare for free, now had to pay non-cheap premiums to get less. It is an unfortunate situation.
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I agree that ACA has huge flaws. I hate HATE it that it was such a gift to insurance companies. But I met this fellow last year who has his life saved by it. And that’s obviously a huge deal.
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