Trump May Have Dodged Paying Federal Taxes For 18 Years: Report

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump might not have paid any federal income tax since 1995, according to a New York Times report.

A tax filing from 1995 indicates Trump filed a loss of nearly $1 billion in a single year, which would have been enough to avoid paying federal income taxes for the next 18 years. But whether or not this is the case can’t be determined by the public because Trump has refused to release his income tax filings, a commonality for presidential candidates for more than 30 years. The GOP nominee has repeatedly said he won’t do so because he is under a routine audit by the IRS.

In a statement, the Trump campaign didn’t deny the Times report, but it did have some forceful words for the newspaper.

“The only news here is that the more than 20-year-old alleged tax document was illegally obtained, a further demonstration that the New York Times, like establishment media in general, is an extension of the Clinton Campaign, the Democratic Party and their global special interests,” the campaign said, according to the Boston Globe.

The campaign also said Trump pays plenty of taxes, but didn’t list federal income taxes as one of them.

“Mr. Trump is a highly-skilled businessman who has a fiduciary responsibility to his business, his family and his employees to pay no more tax than legally required,” the statement read. “That being said, Mr. Trump 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, along with very substantial charitable contributions. 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. “

If the New York Times report is accurate, Trump didn’t break any laws but simply found a way to navigate the tax system for his own benefit.

“If it wasn’t clear before, it is now: The tax code is tilted toward the rich in its statutory framework, its exceptions, and in how it is enforced and administered,” Steven M. Rosenthal, a real estate tax specialist and senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, told the New York Times.

Rosenthal added: “The American public needs to wake up and send a message that the tax code should be written to generate revenue and enforced to collect it, not to favor wealthy real estate developers and other special interests and their lobbyists.”

Sources: New York Times (2), Boston Globe/ Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore/Flickr