Page 118 - Tax Code News Today

Has fought this, he could have voluntarily given tax information, he fought it in the courts. hes finally lost. theres this question, i think, is is his motivation that hes up to no good, theres fraud and sketchiness, or is it that what his tax records show is hes not a very successful businessman, and to go back to what susanne craig was saying in the previous hour, the question of are you coming up with creative ways to book losses or are you actually losing money? it seems like its a lot of t...

Not auditing him, and that tax laws allow for some of this, you know, dubious deductions? >> i think it could very well be all of the above. there is a lot of stuff in the tax code that is scandalous and yet legal. just because a person pays very little in taxes does not in and of itself mean theyre breaking the law. there are plenty of legal ways to avoid taxes rather than evade them. that said, there is still plenty of dodging material within these tax returns. some of which we knew before. so...

Be done to congress the candidate and campaign issue or, more broadly, about the tax code generally? >> the house of representatives passed legislation right after the ways and means committee got the tax returns. congress ended, so that legislation could not be passed by the senate. that was a good approach. that approach mandated that presidential tax returns be audited as a matter of law. it was simply a matter of irs policy, which wasnt being followed earlier. mandated that presidential tax ...

Loopholes. would anything in the inflation reduction act affect what donald trump was able to do with these tax returns? >> i think the biggest thing in the inflation reduction act with the roughly 80 billion dollars that are added to the irs. one of the things that comes out of this investigation by the ways and means committee is, that the irs didnt have enough resources to really go through all of these. again, this is such a complicated. stuff for folks to understand it at home, basically th...

Presidents tax returns started with richard nixon. so that is one good thing that he did for the country, was he gave up his tax returns. i think that there are other things that could be looked at, and that is reforming the tax code. if we look at it and we see that he has -- he, donald trump, has been able to claim no income because of how the tax code is written, then possibly we need to look at that tax code and say is this how it should work? should people be audited? we also know he wasnt ...

Reveal he paid $750 in federal income tax in 2016 and 2017, and nothing in 2020, claiming more business losses than earnings. how is he in a position to pay so little some years, less than you and me, in income taxes? >> its a great question. look, the tax code is extremely complicated. president trump has utilized the tax code to his advantage. >> reporter: democrats went all the way to the supreme court to get their hands on the returns after trump defied decades of tradition, declining to rel...

Included in these returns happen to be true. its one thing for the math to add up, to use the law and put numbers on a piece of paper. but the purpose of an audit is to make sure that theres a factual basis for whats being asserted in the return. when the committee began its work on this, it was all around the question as to whether or not the irs was properly enforcing the tax code on mr. trump. that included auditing him. >> were they? >> thats the problem. the biggest, most significant findin...

Tax filings that show zero revenue but hundreds of thousands of dollars in expenses. trump did this over his 1984 tax returns and got caught. there were two trials. judges in both cases found that he committed civil tax fraud. that put him on notice that showing you have a business or maybe its an imaginary business with no revenue for which you take expenses to reduce your taxes is a no-no. thats evidence very powerful evidence of criminal intent. >> so kathryn, do some of these fishy things in...

Was after watergate. and in fact, we are seeing a presidents tax returns started with richard nixon, so that is one good thing that he did for the country, was, he gave up his tax returns. i think that there are other things that could be looked at and that is reforming the tax code, if we look at it and we see that he has, he, donald trump, has been able to claim no income because of how the tax code is written. then, possibly, we need to look at that tax code and say, is this how it should wor...

Who did not want to see him be the party nominee in 22 a for it despite him already announcing his campaign. so it is a bit of a mixed bag but how much this will really matter? do people really care that he did not pay his taxes in the people that they are about is a republican base. but im hearing today in conversations is something that i expected. is that he is a job creator, of course he is going to use loopholes in our tax code to avoid paying too much money is that he can pertain some of h...