The RW spin on Trump's taxes is that he was just being smart, following the law.

[DanTex]

Here's the answer (IMHO).

Trump says he knows how rigged the system is because he exploited it all these years. And he says that "he alone" knows how to fix it. But if you look at his tax proposals, he wants to make things even more tilted towards the wealthy. If he is actually worth the $10B he says he is, his estate tax repeal alone would give his family a $4B tax cut. And he's also proposing massive income tax cuts to the wealthy.

Trump also says he wants to get rid of loopholes that people use to dodge taxes. The one instance of this is the carried interest loophole, which allows private equity and hedge fund managers to pay the 15% capital gains rate instead of the income tax rate. But Trump isn't in private equity, he's in real estate, and he specifically wants to keep in place similar loopholes that benefit real estate developers, in fact he wants to add more loopholes that would benefit his business.

And the specific loss-carry-forward provision that allowed Trump to use his $1B loss to avoid taxes for up to 15 years in the future, Trump's tax plan doesn't change that at all.

So, yeah, Trump is an expert on weaseling out of taxes. Also getting around embargos and laws about charitable foundations. But he's not planning on putting that expertise to work for the American people, he wants to use it to further enrich himself and his wealthy real-state friends at the expense of everyone else.

[TheBlackAdder]

1. They can try spining it, the division of the classes exposes itself in a painfully obvious way.

[Koinos]

2. Bill and Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, were good citizens who paid their fair share.

For the 2015 tax year, they paid $3,624,455 in federal taxes with an adjusted gross income of $10,594,529.

Trump is not a good citizen. He doesn't belong in our beautiful country, and he doesn't even belong on our beautiful planet. He soils everything he touches.

And it was his accountants and lawyers who were so-called "smart," not Trump. It is they who did the dodging for him. Wait until we see the Trump foundation tax-evasion and self-dealing money-laundering scheme brought to light. All of a sudden, Trump will be blaming his lawyers and accountants; and he will no longer be bragging about how "smart" he was to pay no taxes.

Trump isn't smart enough to cheat and/or find loopholes; he is a weasel who pays other sociopaths to do his dirty work for him.

[justiceischeap]

3. For me, it's not even really about the taxes

I can actually understand his accountants taking advantage of the laws/loopholes. Otherwise they'd be shitty accountants. It's losing almost $1 billion dollars at a time when people were basically raking in the dough.

[NewJeffCT]

5. That is part of it, but it also means

that in the 20 years since he lost the billion dollars, his total earnings have been less than $1 billion. So, an average of less than $50 million/year for those 20 years. Extremely wealthy, yes, but not Mark Cuban or Mike Bloomberg wealthy.

[radius777]

4. Trump drove his businesses into the ground,

then got to benefit by using laws/loopholes that benefit people like him at the expense of regular people.

He's 'smart', in that he games the system for his own benefit, which is legal, which is the problem, and why he's the problem, and can never be the solution.