The Point With Trump’s Taxes

With the recent New York Times article about Trump possible avoiding taxes for up to 18 years, the news media has been in a bit of a frenzy. But, largely, to me at least, it seems like they’ve missed the point.  We can have a debate about whether the tax code is promoting recovery or allowing the rich to skate on the back of the middle class in cases like this, but it’s the secondary question.

I expect most people try to take advantage of anything the tax code offers to lower their tax liability. If someone can finagle that down to zero, then good for them. However, assuming it was all done legally, it’s not the point. For me the point is that this was only possible because of a huge, nearly billion dollar loss. Since Trump is running in large part, on his success in the business world, this loss stands in direct contrast to that. To put that in perspective, he lost more in one year than fifty people might make in a lifetime. That he was able to bounce back from that is due, in large  part, to taking advantage of the tax code that he claims to want to fix. But, while Trump was able to recover, how many were not? How many business had to close because he never paid his bills? How many people lost jobs at his operations? His recovery came at the expense of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of others.

This revelation also reveals the hypocrisy of his criticism of others for not paying enough in taxes.

People used to marvel at the reality distortion field created by Apple and Steve Jobs but Jobs had nothing on Trump.