Donald Trump May Not Have Paid Federal Income Taxes For 18 Years, NYT Report Says

Donald Trump declared a more than $900 million loss on his 1995 income tax returns, according to a report from The New York Times. The paper states the loss was so great, he could have avoided paying any federal income tax for the next 18 years.

The New York Times states that its reporting is based on three pages the newspaper received in the mail in an envelope that did not indicate who sent them but had a return address of Trump Tower. The envelope contained the first pages of Trump's returns from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

The paper reports that the $916 million loss was a result of "the financial wreckage he left behind in the early 1990s through mismanagement of three Atlantic City casinos, his ill-fated foray into the airline business and his ill-timed purchase of the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan."

The paper indicates that Trump declared a $916 million loss — enough to offset $50 million in taxable income each year for the next 18 years.

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The Times states that experts it consulted indicate Trump's deductions appear to be perfectly legal.

"He has a vast benefit from his destruction," the paper quotes one of those experts, Joel Rosenfeld, an assistant professor at New York University, as saying.

A Trump campaign statement to the paper "neither challenged nor confirmed" the loss but, instead, focused on how Trump is a tax expert.

"Mr. Trump knows the tax code far better than anyone who has ever run for President and he is the only one that knows how to fix it," the paper quotes the campaign as saying.

The Times states that it received a separate letter from a Trump associate raising the possibility of legal action since the paper was not authorized to have received the returns.

The Times has indicated it is prepared for such a legal battle. Last month, CNN reported that New York Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet said he is prepared to go to jail if someone were to leak Trump's tax returns to the paper.

Trump's tax returns have been a subject of the campaign since before it officially began. He is the first major party presidential candidate in more than 40 years not to release his tax returns.

The Washington Post previously reported that records showed Trump paid no federal income tax in 1978 and 1979.

In June, Politico reported that Trump had apparently paid zero or close to zero personal income taxes in 1991 and 1993.

He originally said that he would release them, but then as the campaign went on he said he couldn't because he is under an audit. The IRS says there is nothing that would prevent him from releasing his returns — even under audit.

Two weeks ago, one of Trump's sons, Donald Trump Jr., told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that his father wouldn't release his taxes because it would be a distraction.

"Because he's got a 12,000-page tax return that would create … financial auditors out of every person in the country asking questions that would detract from (his father's) main message," the paper said.

The Washington Post recently put together a video showing Trump's different responses over the months to the question "when will you release your taxes?"

In the debate last week, when Hillary Clinton — who has posted her tax returns going back to 2007 on her website — brought up how Trump had not paid taxes 20 years ago, he interrupted her.

"That makes me smart," he said.