Donald Trump's tax plan would've nearly wiped out his 2005 tax burden

[DonViejo]

Updated by Dylan Matthews@[e-mail] Mar 14, 2017, 11:20pm EDT

The two pages of Donald Trump’s 2005 tax return released by veteran tax journalist David Cay Johnston and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow leave a lot of questions unanswered. But there are two things the document makes clear:

1. Trump was able to claim huge amounts of “negative income,” which substantially reduced his ordinary income tax burden.

2. He paid $38 million in total federal income taxes on an income of $153 million only because of the alternative minimum tax, a tax provision Trump now wants to repeal as president.

Trump lists about $152.7 million in income for the year, most of it real estate income, business income, and capital gains, on the 1040 tax form. Less than $1 million of his income came in the form of ordinary wages. But under "other income" he lists $103.2 million in negative income — that is, money he lost in that year or past years on business ventures.

This negative income could take a few forms. It could be past business losses, carried forward. We know from the New York Times’s reporting that Trump claimed $916 million in losses in 1995, which he still could have been carrying forward in 2005. It could also be depreciation of assets his business purchased: Instead of letting companies deduct the full cost of investments like new buildings, the tax code requires them to “depreciate” the assets, or deduct their value over time.

more
http://www.vox.com/2017/3/14/14930368/trump-amt-alternative-minimum-tax

[Squinch]

1. Next step: Make it retroactive. Who doesn't believe he would do this? Anyone? Buehler?

[dalton99a]

2. Kick.