The disclosure this week that Donald Trump accumulated a staggering $1.77 billion in losses from 1985 to 1994 was not, in itself, terribly surprising to anyone who has followed Trump's financial travails. That's because the same New York Times reporters who broke this week's story - and who won a Pulitzer Prize for their investigations into the president's personal finances - had previously unearthed state tax returns from 1995 showing that Trump claimed tax losses of close to $1 billion. What's truly stunning, however, is how Trump responded to the news.
Rather than attributing the losses to business troubles from which he ultimately bounced back, Trump insisted instead that the losses were conjured up to avoid taxes. "Real estate developers in the 1980's & 1990's, more than 30 years ago, were entitled to massive write offs and depreciation which would, if one was actively building, show losses and tax losses in almost all cases," Trump tweeted Wednesday morning. "Much was non monetary. Sometimes considered 'tax shelter,'" he continued, adding that for real estate magnates like him, tax ploys were "sport."
Never mind that the 1990s were not by anyone's count "more than 30 years ago" - math has never been our commander in chief's strong suit. What's mind-blowing about Trump's morning tweetstorm is that the president of the United States - who has a constitutional responsibility to take care that the laws, including the tax laws, are faithfully executed - is gloating about his own efforts to skirt the tax code. And he is doing this in full view of his 60.1 million Twitter followers, only some of whom are Russian bots. The man who sits two rungs above the IRS commissioner in the executive branch's organizational chart is bragging that tax dodging is one of his pastimes.
Some of Trump's tax minimization moves were, concededly, kosher. It's perfectly legal, for example, to claim depreciation deductions for real estate, which are intended to reflect the gradual decline over time in the value of buildings and fixtures. Far more dubious, however, were Trump's attempts to write down his debts in the early 1990s without reporting the forgiven loans as income on his tax returns. And Trump's efforts to minimize estate and gift taxes on transfers of wealth from his father Fred sometimes amounted to - in the Times' words - "outright fraud."
Of course, anyone who has been following Trump-related tax news over the past several years should know by now that the president's attitude toward tax compliance is cavalier, if not contemptuous. Still, seeing the president brag about bilking the IRS should shake every American who strives to fulfill her or his taxpaying obligations. Trump's tweet is reminiscent of a remark attributed to Leona Helmsley, who, like Trump, inherited a New York real estate fortune, and who supposedly said that "only the little people pay taxes." The difference is that Helmsley landed in prison, while Trump landed in the White House.