Our Tax System Allows and Encourages Massive Rip-Offs Like Trump’s
It’s tempting to turn the new reporting on Donald Trump’s tax shenanigans, paying only $750 in taxes in 2016 and 2017, into a story about Trump as a singular villain. He’s despicable, but he could only get away with it because we live under a system that allows the wealthy to rip off $266 billion from the country every single year.
Donald Trump during a news conference at the White House on September 27, 2020 in Washington, DC. (Joshua Roberts / Getty Images)
Donald Trump’s $70,000 hairstyling bill may be getting all the attention, but there are two unanswered questions from the New York Times exposé on Donald Trump’s tax returns.
Question 1: How Much Did Trump Enrich Himself in 2017?
You may recall that back in 2017, Trump spearheaded a massive tax cut bill that was criticized for delivering most of its benefits to the very wealthy. At the time, I led the investigative reporting team that broke open the story of what would become known as the Corker Kickback — and the question is how much Trump was personally enriched by that specific provision, which was designed to benefit real estate investors.
We won a major award for our reporting, but we weren’t able to discern exactly how much Trump and his family may have reaped from the language.
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