Of course, anybody who has followed Trump’s career already knew that much of what he said was erroneous and deceptive. He financed the parts of his business portfolio that he didn’t inherit from Fred by taking on huge loans. During the recession of the early nineteen-nineties, four of his highly indebted businesses declared bankruptcy—three casinos in Atlantic City and the Plaza Hotel on Fifth Avenue. Other Trump businesses only survived because they were sold or his lenders decided they were worth more as going concerns and allowed him to write down some of his debts.
The Times reporters and other journalists have already covered some of this troubled history. In September, 2016, the Times received a copy of part of Trump’s 1995 tax return, which showed that he declared a massive tax loss, of nine hundred and sixteen million dollars. Under tax laws, business owners are allowed to carry losses into subsequent years and offset them against income. Trump’s loss was so huge in 1995, the Times noted, that it “could have allowed him to legally avoid paying any federal income taxes for up to 18 years.” In response to that Times scoop, Trump’s campaign released a statement that didn’t challenge the nine-hundred-and-sixteen-million-dollar loss but claimed that he “has paid hundreds of millions of dollars in property taxes, sales and excise taxes, real estate taxes, city taxes, state taxes, employee taxes and federal taxes.”
By lumping all the different taxes together, this statement seemed to concede that Trump’s federal-tax payments after 1995 weren’t very large. The latest Times report confirms that Trump didn’t pay much tax in the decade before 1995, either. To wit: “Over all, Mr. Trump lost so much money that he was able to avoid paying income taxes for eight of the 10 years.” (The story also notes, “It is not known whether the I.R.S. later required changes after audits.”)
This revelation confirms another thing that many Trump skeptics have long suspected. The financial problems his businesses faced predated the bust of the early nineteen-nineties. “The numbers show that in 1985, Mr. Trump reported losses of $46.1 million from his core businesses—largely casinos, hotels and retail space in apartment buildings,” the Times reported. “They continued to lose money every year, totaling $1.17 billion in losses for the decade.” In 1987, Trump published a ghostwritten book—“Trump: The Art of the Deal”—that became a best-seller and cemented his status as a celebrity. By the time the book came out, the story notes, Trump “was already in deep financial distress, losing tens of millions of dollars on troubled business deals.”
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