Donald Trump May Have Skipped Paying Taxes For 18 Years After $916M NJ, NY Business Losses, NYT Report Says

Donald Trump declared a more than $900 million loss on his 1995 income tax returns after suffering seriously large losses from his business failures in Atlantic City and elsewhere, 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 their reporting is based on three pages they received in the mail in an envelope that did not indicate who sent them. The envelope contained the first pages of Trump's returns from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

The paper states 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 for the next 18 years.

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The Times states that experts they 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.

Here is the response:

The Times states that they 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.

Trump's tax returns have been a subject of the campaign since before it officially began. 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 his 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 brought up how he had not paid taxes 20 years ago, he interrupted her.

"That makes me smart," he said.

The report also puts a spotlight on Trump's failures in Atlantic City, where the casino mogul tried to stake his claim soon after gambling was approved in 1978.

Even as other casinos thrived for three decades in a sort of "Las Vegas West," Trump's four casinos struggled, and they were often half-empty of patrons before they eventually declared bankruptcy. He eventually pulled all of his interests out of Atlantic City by 2009.

Reporting by Colin Miner and Tom Davis

Photo: screen shot of NY Times