WE SHOULD TOO
Barbados to become a republic: What it means for the Crown, the Commonwealth and Canada


Crystal Goomansingh

© (AP Photo/Alastair Grant, File) FILE - In this Wednesday, May 9, 2012 file photo, Britain's Queen Elizabeth II sits next to Prince Philip in the House of Lords as she waits to read the Queen's Speech to lawmakers in London.

It was a historic throne speech.

On Sept. 16, Her Excellency Gov. Gen. Dame Sandra Mason told the world Barbados was removing Queen Elizabeth as its head of state.

"Having obtained independence half a century ago, our country can be in no doubt about its capacity for self-governance," Mason said.

The small island nation in the Caribbean was one of the oldest English colonies in the West Indies dating back to the 17th century, however it had also been claimed by the Spaniards and Portuguese.

Arawaks and Caribs were the original inhabitants.

In 1966 Barbados gained independence from the United Kingdom but kept the Queen as head of state.

Read more: Prince Harry, Meghan Markle call on Commonwealth to acknowledge its past: ‘Right those wrongs’

The country was shaped by its history of exploited people.

During the so-called Sugar Revolution, an estimated 387,000 Africans were captured and shipped to the island against their will to work on plantations.

As Barbados moves to become a fully sovereign country, Prime Minister Mia Mottley says it will allow young boys and girls to not only dream about one day becoming the head of state but now they will be able to make it a reality.

"We respect our heritage but who we are as a people today, (we) are proud Barbadians who are not better than anyone else but as good as anyone else," Mottley said.

Read more: Succession to British throne: Quebec professors ask Supreme Court to hear appeal

Other Caribbean nations have also left the monarchy to become republics including Trinidad and Tobago but the last country to remove the Queen as head of state was Mauritius in 1992.

With Barbados out, that leaves 15 Commonwealth countries which have the Queen as their monarch, including the United Kingdom.

Nathan Tidridge is the vice-president of the Institute for the Study of the Crown in Canada.

"I don't think others will be jumping and following Barbados. I think it's going to be a much more nuanced discussion, if there is a discussion at all," said Tidridge. "And I don't see Canada having that sort of discussion. I mean, no prime minister ever wants to open up the Constitution and try and create a new constitutional arrangement for Canada."

Read more: How Canada could break up with the monarchy

The Constitution sets a balance between the provinces, territories and the federal government. And to do away with the monarchy, experts say, is to do away with that infrastructure.

"You would have to get the provinces to agree to give up on the Crown and ask P.E.I., who is an equal partner to Ontario in our federation, if they'll ever give up the Crown. So as an institution for provincial independence, I don't ever see them wanting to get rid of it," said Tidridge.

Then there are there the historic treaties between the Crown and 364 First Nations.

The government of Canada currently recognizes 70 of these treaties signed between 1701 and 1923 and another 25 modern treaties which form agreements with 97 Indigenous communities.

If Canada was to remove the Crown, new agreements would be needed.

Read more: Supreme Court will not hear appeal challenging British royal succession law

"Canadians need to understand that it's intrinsic to understanding the very foundations of the country. That, to me, is the most important," said Tidridge.

Information on the website for ​Citizens for a Canadian Republic acknowledges there would be challenges when it comes to amending the Constitution but encourages the discussion to be had regardless.

It offers suggestions to move the country away from the Queen.

One idea shared on the website focuses on citizenship ceremonies saying, "New Canadians should not be subjected to swearing an oath to a monarch who not only isn’t a Canadian citizen herself, but also, in some cases, represents many aspects of what prospective citizens are trying to leave behind. They’re coming to Canada to embrace a way of life that emphasizes equality and the rights of the individual, not peerage, royalty and classism."

Mottley says in Barbados much of the work has already been done as the country has two constitutional reviews and those will be used by the transition team.

"We've been having this discussion for more than 20 years," said Mottley.

The president's role will be similar to the head of state with an elected prime minister leading the government.

The transition process is set to be completed by November 2021, in time for Barbados 55th anniversary of independence.

 

Democratic Presidential Nominee Joe Biden releases new ad targeting Trump’s alleged tax avoidance

*Within 24 hours of news that President Trump allegedly paid less taxes than regular working folk on millions of dollars in income, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s campaign has responded with a new ad.

The video posted on Twitter compares the amount of taxes that regular folk like teachers, firefighters and nurses typically pay compared to Trump’s alleged tax bill.

“Teachers paid $7,239. Firefighters paid $5,283. Nurses paid $10,216. Donald Trump paid $750,” the 30-second spot points out. As of Monday morning at 9 a.m. ET, the video had more than 2.2 million views on Twitter.

There’s no word from the vice president’s campaign if they plan to put money behind the spot to run on digital or TV.

Watch below or view here on Twitter.

Trump’s Seventy-Three-Million-Dollar Tax Refund Is the Biggest Outrage of All

By John Cassidy

September 28, 2020

To avoid paying taxes, the President has exploited his many business failures, including losses of more than three hundred million dollars from his fifteen golf courses since 2000.Photograph by David Moir / Reuters

After doggedly pursuing the story of Donald Trump’s taxes (or non-taxes) for years, the New York Times has hit the motherlode with its latest investigation, which revealed that the self-proclaimed billionaire paid a grand total of seven hundred and fifty dollars in federal income taxes in 2016, when he was elected President, and the same sum in 2017, his first year in the White House. In ten of the fifteen years before 2016, he paid no federal income taxes at all. If you haven’t yet read the lengthy Times report, I won’t spoil it by spilling all the juicy bits. Instead, I’ll focus on one that is arguably the most Trumpian of all.

Because of previous reporting, including a couple of significant Times pieces in October, 2016, and May, 2019, as well as contributions by Trump biographers, such as David Cay Johnston, we’ve known for a long time that the President is a serial tax avoider. Between 1984 and 2004, he used actual losses, loss write-downs from previous years, and other accounting dodges to pay virtually nothing in federal income taxes. From 2005 to 2007, this latest Times scoop reveals, he did finally pay about seventy million dollars to the Internal Revenue Service. But then, in 2010, he demanded a full refund for those tax payments. And the I.R.S. acceded to his request: it paid him $72.9 million, including interest. This 2010 refund seems to be at the center of an auditing dispute between Trump and the tax authorities that has dragged on for almost a decade. It also appears to be the money that Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer, was referring to in his 2019 testimony to Congress, when he recalled Trump showing him a huge check from the U.S. Treasury and remarked that Trump “could not believe how stupid the government was for giving someone like him that much money back.”

How could a person who doesn’t pay taxes get a big refund? As always with Trump, the details of his financial shenanigans are a bit complicated, but the basic outline is fairly easy to grasp. He hates paying taxes. To avoid doing it, he will resort to virtually anything—and that includes exploiting his many business failures.

In the late nineteen-eighties and early nineteen-nineties, Trump’s businesses, some of which he had greatly overpaid for when he bought them, racked up more than a billion dollars in losses, and four of them ended up filing for bankruptcy: three casinos in Atlantic City and his Plaza Hotel, in New York. In 1995, as he emerged from this wreckage, he declared a tax loss of more than nine hundred million dollars, which the I.R.S. allowed him to use in subsequent years as an offset against any profits his businesses made. So even in years when the Trump Organization did well, his loss carryovers reduced his tax bill to zero.

According to the new Times investigation, this basic pattern of heavy losses in parts of the Trump empire offsetting substantial earnings in other parts of it has continued for the past decade and a half. Since 2000, for example, Trump’s fifteen golf courses have together generated losses of $315.6 million, even as other Trump enterprises—including Trump Tower, overseas licensing deals, and an investment in two office towers operated by Vornado Realty Trust—have generated substantial revenues. In 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014, Trump paid no federal income taxes at all. In 2016 and 2017 combined, he contributed enough to the U.S. Treasury for it to buy a new love seat from Pottery Barn.

The only notable exceptions to this pattern of minimal tax payments were the years 2005, 2006, and 2007, when “The Apprentice,” which Trump co-produced with NBC, was doing very well, and the big accounting loss that he had carried over from the nineteen-nineties had run out. “With no prior-year losses left to reduce his taxable income, he paid substantial federal income taxes for the first time in his life: a total of $70.1 million,” the Times report says. This money didn’t stay in the coffers of the U.S. government for very long.

In 2010, Trump declared to the I.R.S. that, during 2008 and 2009, his businesses had lost another $1.4 billion. Exploiting a little-noticed clause in a piece of legislation that Barack Obama had signed into law as part of the efforts to stimulate the economy after the Great Recession, Trump claimed that this huge loss entitled him to a full refund of the income taxes he had paid in 2005, 2006, and 2007. The I.R.S. quickly paid out Trump’s claim pending an audit. The refund “would eventually grow to $70.1 million, plus $2,733,184 in interest,” the Times reports. “He also received $21.2 million in state and local refunds, which often piggyback on federal filings.”

Trump has never been short on chutzpah. At some point, though, someone in the auditing department of the I.R.S. seems to have decided that this latest maneuver was over the line. Under tax law, refunds of more than two million dollars require approval from Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation, which also got involved. In 2014, an agreement between Trump and the I.R.S. appeared to have been reached, “but the audit resumed and grew to include Mr. Trump’s returns for 2010 through 2013,” the Times report says. “In the spring of 2016, with Mr. Trump closing in on the Republican nomination, the case was sent back to the [congressional] committee. It has remained there, unresolved, with the statute of limitations repeatedly pushed forward.”

It isn’t clear why the dispute has dragged on for so long, but the Times highlights one intriguing possibility. In 2009, Trump finally gave up ownership of his financially stricken casinos in Atlantic City, which had filed for bankruptcy again. In the same year, his tax returns included “a declaration of more than $700 million in business losses that he had not been allowed to use in prior years,” the Times says. Proprietors who abandon loss-making businesses are allowed to claim some of the losses they incurred for tax purposes, but they have to give up the businesses entirely and not receive anything of value in return. Trump got something. When Trump Entertainment Resorts was restructured and placed under new ownership, he received five per cent of the stock in the successor company. “The materials reviewed by the Times do not make clear whether Mr. Trump’s refund application reflected his public declaration of abandonment,” the report says. “If it did, that 5 percent could place his entire refund in question.”

Including the interest that has accumulated since 2010, it could cost Trump about a hundred million dollars to repay the I.R.S., the Times calculates. If he were a genuine billionaire, he could raise this sum without very much trouble. But given the evidence that many of his businesses, including the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., seem to make substantial losses, could he even afford to pay out a hundred million dollars?

Trump’s businesses “reported cash on hand of $34.7 million in 2018, down 40 percent from five years earlier,” the Times report says. In theory, he could take out another bank loan to pay a big tax bill. During the past decade, though, he’s already incurred heavy borrowings. He “is personally responsible for loans and other debts totaling $421 million, with most of it coming due within four years,” the Times notes. “Should he win re-election, his lenders could be placed in the unprecedented position of weighing whether to foreclose on a sitting president.”

Should Trump lose the election, which opinion polls suggest is a more likely outcome, he will have to deal with the I.R.S. and his bank creditors as a private citizen. Could this, perhaps, be one reason that he won’t commit to accepting the election result and leaving the White House without protest if it goes against him?

Whatever happens on November 3rd, the Times story confirms that Trump has been playing the I.R.S. for decades. It also shows that, in the U.S. tax framework, there is one set of rules for the majority and another for the very rich. A confidence trickster from the get-go, Trump exploited this setup to denude the U.S. Treasury, enrich himself, and make a mockery of the entire system. If anything good comes out of the whole thing, it’s that the arguments for meaningful reforms of the tax laws and tougher enforcement are now stronger than ever. Of course, Trump will have to be voted out of office for change to happen.

John Cassidy has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1995. He also writes a column about politics, economics, and more for newyorker.com.

 

EXPLAINER

Why Are Armenia and Azerbaijan Heading to War?

The Soviet collapse caused a brutal conflict that’s remained unresolved for three decades.

BY JAMES PALMER

 | SEPTEMBER 28, 2020, 1:01 PM

A video still shows members of Azerbaijan's armed forces firing artillery during clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh in an unidentified location, from footage released Sept. 28. DEFENCE MINISTRY OF AZERBAIJAN VIA REUTERS

Fighting has intensified along the effective Armenian-Azerbaijani border around the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, with dozens of people dead and disputed claims about the destruction of helicopters and tanks. Both countries have called up their reserves and declared martial law at home, as well as a state of war in some regions. Fighting between the two is normal, with hundreds of incidents over the last few years, but this round of violence threatens to spill over into a full-blown war, as it did in the 1990s.

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Wait, there was a war?

It’s the great forgotten conflict of the Soviet breakup, a war from 1992 to 1994 that both nations still obsess over and that was barely noticed by the public in the West despite at least 20,000 people dead and a million displaced through ethnic cleansing—about 70 percent of them Azerbaijanis fleeing Armenian-held territory, and the rest Armenians fleeing Azerbaijani-held territory.

The heart of the war is Nagorno-Karabakh, a beautiful highland region—its name literally means “mountainous black garden”—that plays a powerful role in the romantic imagination of both countries. As part of the Soviet takeover of the Transcaucasus in 1919-1920, it was allocated to the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, despite having a largely Armenian population. That wasn’t a huge problem as long as both Armenia and Azerbaijan were part of the Soviet empire; many Armenians lived in their neighboring republic and vice versa. The religious differences between predominantly Christian Orthodox Armenia and predominantly Sunni Muslim Azerbaijan also mattered less in an officially atheist state. But when ethnic and religious protests became more acceptable in the 1980s, the Armenian residents began to vigorously complain about their status, and about an alleged campaign of Azerification by the authorities in Baku.

That exploded into violence in 1989-1990, both in Nagorno-Karabakh and in the Azerbaijani cities of Baku and Sumqayit, where pogroms directed against Armenians resulted in the Soviet military enforcing martial law to try to halt the violence, to little avail. By 1991, as the Soviet Union collapsed, war between the two newly emerged nations over the disputed territory—which unilaterally declared its own independence from Azerbaijan—was inevitable, especially as leaders saw jingoism as an easy path to consolidate their own power.

The war itself was both tragic and sometimes farcical. The disintegration of the Soviet army created huge numbers of Russian mercenaries, who fought on both sides, sometimes switching overnight. Criminals thrived amid the chaos; the only day that flights took off again between Baku and Yerevan was when an Armenian mobster died in 1993, since his Azerbaijani colleagues wished to pay their respects at his funeral. And after an initial retreat, Armenia took the upper hand, eventually resulting in a Moscow-brokered 1994 cease-fire that left Armenia in control of most of Nagorno-Karabakh.

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Did Azerbaijan take the loss well?

Not at all. Losing the war caused deep trauma in Azerbaijan, not only because of the territorial loss and the suffering of Azerbaijanis expelled by Armenian troops but also because of the relative size and strength of the two countries—Azerbaijan has three times the population of Armenia. That led to a huge variety of conspiracy theories around the loss, including the widespread belief that the United States had secretly backed the Armenian side. In reality, the Armenian forces had simply been better led, less corrupt, and more committed—Armenian volunteers fought far more enthusiastically than demoralized Azerbaijani conscripts. Russia had also increasingly favored Armenia, sending shipments of weapons and providing military training.

The depth of bitterness can be judged from an infamous murder case. In 2004, both Armenia and Azerbaijan sent military officers to an English-language course in Budapest, Hungary, run by NATO for non-NATO members. In the middle of the night, the Azerbaijani officer, Ramil Safarov, murdered one of the Armenian officers in his sleep with an ax and then tried to kill the other. Safarov had not served in the Nagorno-Karabakh war but was from a town now occupied by Armenia.

By itself, that might be an individual act of madness. But after Azerbaijan managed to get Safarov transferred from Hungary to Azerbaijan eight years into his life sentence for murder, the president immediately pardoned him, promoted him to major, gave him an apartment, and awarded him back pay. The head of the foreign ministry described him as having been “thrown in jail after he defended his country’s honor and dignity of the people.”

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Why has nothing been resolved?

In order to keep a stronger position in negotiations and avoid allegations of aggression, Armenia has maintained Nagorno-Karabakh as a nominally independent republic rather than incorporating it into its own territory. Barely anyone recognizes the puppet state, officially called the Republic of Artsakh. Both the United States and Russia have played a significant role in the long-running but largely futile attempts at finding a permanent resolution to the issue. On the U.S. side, Armenian Americans are a moderately influential lobbying group, but Azerbaijan has invested heavily in ties with U.S. oil companies.

In theory, the two sides agreed the Madrid Principles in the mid-2000s: Armenia gives up the periphery of territory it occupies around Nagorno-Karabakh itself, displaced peoples return to their homes, both countries and outside powers guarantee the rights of the residents of the disputed region, and eventually the status of the territory is resolved. But Armenia has no desire to give up its de facto control, and Azerbaijan has no incentive to relinquish its claim—especially as nationalism plays a critical role in keeping leaders in power in both countries, where both publics heavily oppose compromise. It’s not the only frozen conflict in the region, where the Soviet collapse has left behind many disputed territories.

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What caused things to get worse this year?

Well, it’s 2020 and everything is awful, but there were some more specific causes. 2019 saw a lot of fierce rhetoric from both sides about the immutability of their claims, the greatness of the nation, and so forth. This summer, after bloody skirmishes along the border—which both sides blame the other for starting—politicians started wrapping themselves in the flag even more than usual, especially amid the stress and economic failure caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

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Will a new war change things?

The conflict is only a day old, but it’s hard to see a triumphant Azerbaijani reclamation of Nagorno-Karabakh ahead. The initial exchanges cost lives on both sides, but also—if Armenian battle footage is to be believed—saw the destruction of far more materiel on the Azerbaijani side than the Armenian. Armenia holds the heights, making Azerbaijani advances into the difficult mountain territory extremely hard. Independent assessments still rank Azerbaijan’s military readiness poorly; the army is unhappy, corrupt, and inefficient, with the desertion rate running at close to 20 percent. Profits from oil brought massive investment in new equipment between 2008 and 2014, but the crash in prices has left the country struggling financially amid political tumult and brutal repression, and the army lacks the training and doctrine to make efficient use of the weaponry it has bought.

An unexpected Azerbaijani surge could also prompt much more direct intervention by Moscow, most likely to enforce a rapid cease-fire. Both Russia and Iran have offered to negotiate an end to this newest round of hostilities. There’s also the worrying possibility of the conflict spreading—Turkey, for instance, has come heavily out in favor of Baku, thanks to strong ties between Azerbaijanis and Turks and Ankara’s long-standing antagonism toward the Armenians, who keep bringing up the matter of the still-denied Turkish genocide of Armenians in 1915. The religious aspects of the original conflict remained understated compared to nationalist fervor, and Nagorno-Karabakh never became a jihadi cause in the way that, say, Chechnya did. (Some 2,000 former mujahideen fought for Azerbaijan, but for almost entirely mercenary reasons.) That could change this time round.

But the most likely prospect may be a painful, relatively small war followed by another unresolved peace. According to the casualty lists so far, most of those killed hadn’t even been born when the conflict first started.

 Prague's COVID-19 art exhibition offers 

Some of the art was mediated by embassies, and some videos were shot and provided by UNESCO as part of its Next Normal campaign focussed on life after the pandemic.

"The works are fantastic, they capture the ideas and impressions the artists had during the pandemic," visitor Terezie Pokorna told AFP.  "This person made fun of it, that one made a big deal out of it."

From Prague, the exhibition will move on to another Czech city, and perhaps even abroad.

"We are in talks with Belgium, Paris, Serbia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Thailand," Stastny said

Prague's COVID-19 exhibition offers a colourful view of the pandemic through 2,000 works by 50 artists from 60 countries./AFP

The amount Obama paid in federal taxes in first year of office compared to Trump is astonishing

Donald Trump paid just 750 dollars in taxes in both 2016 and 2017.
 by Joe Mellor
September 28, 2020
in World News



Credit;PA
Donald Trump has been waging a legal battle to keep his tax returns hidden.

A New York Times report that President Donald Trump paid just 750 dollars (£578) in federal income tax the year he entered the White House — and, thanks to colossal losses, no income tax at all in 11 of the 18 years that the Times reviewed — served to raise doubts about Mr Trump’s self-image as a shrewd and successful businessman.

The newspaper said Mr Trump initially paid 95 million dollars (£74 million) in taxes over the 18 years it studied.


But he managed to recover most of that money by claiming, and receiving, a stunning 72.9 million dollar (£57.03 million) federal tax refund.

According to the Times, Mr Trump also pocketed 21.2 million dollars (£16.5 million) in state and local refunds, which are typically based on federal filings.

Mr Trump’s outsize refund became the subject of a now-long-standing Internal Revenue Service audit of his finances. The audit was widely known.


Mr Trump has claimed it was the very reason why he cannot release his returns. But the Times report is the first to identify the issue that was mainly in dispute.

As a result of the refund, Mr Trump paid an average 1.4 million dollars (£1.09 million) in federal taxes from 2000 to 2017, the Times reported.


By contrast, the average US taxpayer in the top 0.001% of earners paid about 25 million dollars (£19.5 million) annually over the same timeframe.
– Mr Trump has financed an extravagant lifestyle with the use of business expenses

From his homes, his aircraft – and 70,000 dollars (£54,786) on hair styling during his television show The Apprentice – Mr Trump has capitalised on cost incurred from his businesses to finance a luxurious lifestyle.

The Times noted that Mr Trump’s homes, planes and golf courses are part of the Trump family business and, as such, Mr Trump classified them as business expenses as well.

Because companies can write off business expenses as deductions, all such expenses have helped reduce Mr Trump’s tax liability.

What we know about Trump’s tax affairs is outlined below.
– Many of his best-known businesses are money-losers

The president has frequently pointed to his far-flung hotels, golf courses and resorts as evidence of his success as a developer and businessman. Yet these properties have been been draining money.

The Times reported that Mr Trump has claimed 315 million dollars (£246 million) in losses since 2000 on his golf courses, including the Trump National Doral near Miami, which he has portrayed as a crown jewel in his business empire.

Likewise, his Trump International Hotel in Washington has lost 55 million dollars (£43 million), the Times reported.
– Foreign visitors have helped support Mr Trump’s properties

Since Mr Trump began his presidential run, lobbyists, foreign governments and politicians have lavished significant sums of money on his properties, a spending spree that raised questions about its propriety and legality.

The Times report illustrates just how much that spending has been.

Since 2015, his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida has taken in five million dollars (£3.91 million) more a year from a surge in membership.

The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association spent at least 397,602 dollars (£311,469) in 2017 at Mr Trump’s Washington hotel.

Overseas projects have produced millions more for Mr Trump – three million dollars (£2.35 million) from the Philippines, 2.3 million dollars (£1.8 million) from India and one million dollars (£783,332) from Turkey.
– Mr Trump will face financial pressure as debts become due

Mr Trump seems sure to face heavy financial pressures from the enormous pile of debt he has absorbed.

The Times said the president appears to be responsible for 421 million dollars (£329 million) in loans, most of which will become due within four years.

On top of that, a 100 million dollar (£78.3 million) mortgage on Trump Tower in New York will become due in 2022.
Tax figures

Washington Post data reporter Christopher Ingraham tweeted the amount of Federal taxes paid by each president in first year of office going back to Ronald Regan. As you can see from the figures Barack Obama paid a huge amount more, 2,390 times what Trump paid, in taxes.

Obama paid $1,792,414 a lot more than any of the other Presidents on the list, but light years away from Trump’s minuscule tax return.

Ronald Reagan paid $165,202 – 220 times Trump

George H.W Bush $101,382 – 135 times Trump

Bill Clinton $62,670 – 84 times Trump

George W.Bush $250,221 – 334 times Trump

And the largest was Barack Obama who forked out a colossal 2,390 times what Trump paid.


For those, Trump himself, who might claim fake this is fake news the sources were also shared.

Donald Trump Faces Backlash For Past Tweets, Including One Attacking Barack Obama’s Taxes

CHIP SOMODEVILLA / GETTY IMAGESWHITE HOUSE

Kristine Lofgren

After The New York Times published a bombshell report that claimed President Donald Trump hasn’t paid taxes in 10 out of 15 years because of debt, some of his tweets have come under renewed scrutiny.

One of those tweets from 2012, as The Independent reported, shows him slamming former President Barack Obama for paying 20.5 percent in taxes while earning $790k, which would normally put him in a higher bracket.

“@BarackObama who wants to raise all our taxes,” he wrote, “only pays 20.5% on $790k salary. Do as I say not as I do.”

The news outlet notes that while Obama would typically be expected to pay a higher rate, he had made thousands of dollars of donations to charity, which tends to lower tax responsibility.

Critics were quick to jump on the eight-year-old tweet with renewed backlash.

“Corruption and incomprehensible debt. I guess that means you made good on one campaign promise: To run the government like you run your businesses. I have some money here that I could contribute to help pay off your debts. Let me know where to send it,” tweeted one user with an image that appears to be fake money from a Trump-branded game.

Meanwhile, as The Inquisitr previously reported, Trump appears to have a different financial situation than he has claimed, with hundreds of millions of dollars in money owed to lenders. These losses have reportedly enabled him to not owe taxes for a majority of the past few decades. Of the years that he has paid, his bill was about $750.

Another 2012 tweet written by Trump shows him attacking the half of Americans who don’t pay federal taxes, linking to a Daily Mail story discussing the federal debt.

Some used the old message as a way to affirm why they would be voting for Trump’s opponent Joe Biden in the upcoming November election.

“The Bidens paid about $3.7 million and $1.5 in taxes for 2017 and 2018, respectively — about a third of their adjusted gross income. They gave roughly $1 million and $275,000 to charity in 2017 and 2018, respectively,” wrote one user.

FORBES BILLIONARES BACKING BIDEN/TRUMP

Yes, Donald Trump Is Still A Billionaire. That Makes His $750 Tax Payment Even More Scandalous

Dan AlexanderForbes Staff
Policy
Senior editor at Forbes, covering Donald Trump's business.







Donald Trump ILLUSTRATION BY FORBES; PHOTOS BY EPICS/GETTY IMAGES; MANDEL NGAN/GETTY IMAGES; JONATHAN NEWTON/THE WASHINGTON POST; RAYMOND BOYD/GETTY IMAGES; JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES

“Is Donald Trump really a billionaire?” everyone seemed to be asking Sunday night, after the New York Times dropped a bombshell report about the president’s taxes, which detailed big losses in some years and limited income in others. The answer: Yes, he is indeed.


In fact, Trump is a multibillionaire, worth $2.5 billion, by our count. His portfolio, which includes commercial buildings, golf properties and branding businesses, is worth an estimated $3.66 billion before debt. The president has a fair amount of leverage—adding up to a roughly $1.13 billion—but not enough to drag his net worth below a billion dollars.

To understand how Donald Trump could be so rich—yet look so poor—it’s essential to comprehend the difference between what we’ll call (a) taxable income and (b) operating income. Taxable income is the amount people tell the Internal Revenue Service they earned, after subtracting a bunch of things like depreciation, interest, past losses and, in Trump’s case, questionable business expenses. Operating income captures the amount businesses make from their standard operations, ignoring a bunch of fancy accounting tricks and financial maneuvers.

Many of Donald Trump’s businesses generate a huge amount of operating income, even though his IRS filings reportedly show very little taxable income. That’s important because operating income, not taxable income, is a key factor in determining the value of a real estate asset. Investors want to know how much a building throws off in annual profits. What happens after that on a personal tax return—the level of financial wizardry that a seller might use to make their operating profit look like a loss, and thereby avoid taxes—doesn’t matter much to a potential buyer.

“There’s the tax world, and then there’s the real world,” says Eric Anton, a commercial real estate broker in New York City. “They’re totally different.”

Trump’s operating income is real and documented, laid out in paperwork from local tax offices, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the president’s business partners. Don’t be fooled: The news is not that the president is broke (the Times story notes that tax returns do not list someone’s net worth). The news, instead, is that Donald Trump seems to have avoided paying much in taxes despite significant operating profits at certain properties. In other words, he figured out how to share very little of his fortune with the country he now leads.


Determining Donald Trump’s net worth is just one big math equation: add up the value of the assets, subtract the value of the liabilities. Of course, figuring out what an asset is worth isn’t always easy. For a commercial real estate building, it requires examining the location, the square footage, the valuation multiples and the income—the net operating income, that is.


Consider 40 Wall Street, a skyscraper in New York City that Donald Trump controls. Documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission show that Trump’s net operating income was $18.1 million in 2019. There are 1.2 million square feet in the building, according to a different document filed with the SEC.

In interviews conducted a few months ago, eight New York City real estate experts suggested multiples to apply to those income and square footage numbers. On average, they thought the net operating income should equal about 5.4% of the value. That would suggest the asset was worth $336 million. The same experts, however, also suggested valuing the building at about $400 per square foot. That works out to a total value of $466 million. Coming up with an exact valuation is difficult, but taking the average of the two methodologies and calling it $401 million seems to be a fair approach.

Repeat a similar exercise across Trump’s entire portfolio, and the assets add up to an estimated $3.7 billion. A key variable in almost every calculation is net operating income. It may get wiped out by the time Trump’s accountants finish preparing his taxes, but there’s no denying it’s there at the start, given that it’s documented on plenty of other paperwork.

The president’s partner at 555 California Street, a publicly traded real estate firm named Vornado, disclosed in public filings that its 70% share of the building kicked off $60 million of net operating income in 2019; that means Trump’s 30% stake produced $26 million. A document connected to a loan against 1290 Avenue of the Americas, another building in which Trump holds a 30% interest, lists $96 million of 2019 net operating income, suggesting the president’s share was $29 million. In addition to the $18.1 million of 2019 operating income at 40 Wall Street, SEC filings list $13.3 million at Trump Tower, $1.7 million at Trump Plaza and $600,000 at Trump International Hotel & Tower. The city of New York estimates operating income for the commercial spaces inside Trump World Tower ($1 million), Trump Parc ($600,000), Trump Parc East ($900,000) and Trump Park Avenue (roughly $2.4 million). A Trump Organization representative told Forbes in September 2019 that the president’s store at 6 East 57th Street hauled in $10.7 million of profit annually. Altogether, Trump’s interests in those buildings, which also include residential space in several of them, are worth an estimated $2.3 billion before subtracting debt.

Trump’s golf portfolio is more complicated. He owns ten traditional U.S. golf clubs, which generated $108 million of revenue in 2019, according to an analysis of the president’s annual financial disclosure report. It’s hard to determine the operating margins on those properties, but past performance offers a clue. A 2014 income statement from the Trump club in Westchester County, New York, shows income of $1.1 million on $5.6 million of revenue, which suggests margins of 20%. Documents connected to the Trump club in Jupiter, Florida, show margins of 19% in 2013, 13% in 2014 and 13% in 2015. After hearing those figures, seven golf experts still estimated pre-Covid margins at an average of 21%, which would suggest the operations were throwing off a combined $23 million last year. If the properties were in fact producing that much, they might be worth a combined $200 million today. Even if they’re all losing money, they should still be worth at least $100 million.


The Times story does not list the income at all of Trump’s golf clubs, but it does dig into details at his golf resorts, which were already known to be in trouble. European regulatory filings list losses year after year at the president’s three properties overseas. At Trump National Doral, the president’s resort in Miami, net operating income dropped from $13.8 million in 2015 to $12.4 million in 2016 and $4.3 million in 2017, according to documents obtained from local officials. A representative for the Trump Organization told Forbes that profits ticked up to $9.7 million in 2018. The Times reports that Trump bought Doral for $150 million and then shelled out an additional $213 million on it, suggesting a total investment of $363 million. Forbes estimates it’s worth $153 million. By that math, the president is now $210 million in the hole.

In mid-September, Forbes reported that Doral and the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., seemed to be struggling financially. The Times story confirms that—and adds more specifics. The D.C. hotel opened in 2016 and, by 2018, Trump had already declared tax losses of $55.5 million there, according to the Times. Still, the property is worth something. One investor offered $175 million for it before the coronavirus decimated the hotel industry. The Trumps turned that offer down. Forbes now figures the hotel is worth closer to $168 million. It seems certain that it is continuing to hemorrhage cash.

There are plenty of other revenue-generating properties in Trump’s portfolio, including a 50% share of a hotel-condo collection in Las Vegas, a licensing business and Mar-a-Lago. All of those take in good money. Then there are the toys, which don’t: the airplanes, helicopters and homes in New York, Florida and St. Martin. But even if they’re not making much money, they’re still worth plenty.

Add up all of Donald Trump’s assets—the ones that throw off big cash, the ones that lose serious money and the ones that don’t really operate as businesses—and the total hits that $3.7 billion figure. Real assets worth real money. But that’s not Trump’s net worth. In order to figure that out, you have to consider liabilities.

Trump has previously proclaimed himself the “king of debt,” a nickname that fit early in his career, as he teetered toward bankruptcy, and more recently as president, as he has accumulated massive federal budget deficits. As a businessman, Trump has played it a bit safer lately. No doubt, his estimated $1.1 billion in debt is a tremendous amount of leverage. But considering Trump’s $3.7 billion in assets, most of his bankers should still be able to sleep at night.

A big chunk of Trump’s liabilities is concentrated in 1290 Avenue of the Americas in New York City and 555 California Street in San Francisco, the two skyscrapers he owns in conjunction with Vornado. In its most recent quarterly filings, Vornado disclosed $950 million of debt at the New York property and $543 million at the San Francisco one. That adds up to $1.5 billion in total debt, and Trump’s 30% share amounts to $448 million.

The president owes hundreds of millions more on other Manhattan buildings, as documented in SEC filings and property records. At Trump Tower, he has a $100 million loan. At 40 Wall Street, he owes $139 million. At Trump Plaza, $13 million. At Trump International Hotel & Tower, $6.5 million. At Trump Park Avenue, an estimated $10 million. That’s another $268 million, bringing the tally to $716 million.

The president borrowed $125 million through two publicly recorded mortgages at Doral. His company secured an agreement to borrow $170 million against the D.C. hotel. The Times story lists a balance on that loan of $160 million. It’s possible that Trump has paid some of it down. The president’s financial disclosure report lists liabilities against his Chicago tower of more than $75 million. Tack on at least another $360 million to make it $1.1 billion.

Trump has an $11 million mortgage against a mansion in Palm Beach, plus another loan against a palace in Bedford, New York. He took on one loan at his golf club near D.C. and two mortgages at one of his New Jersey golf courses. Include those, and the total still rounds to $1.1 billion.

Having debt requires paying interest, which reduces the profits Trump has to declare on his tax returns. But the president also seems to be employing far more unusual methods to limit his tax bill.


Donald Trump has long prided himself on gaming the tax system. “Makes me smart,” he famously declared in a 2016 presidential debate. It also might make him vulnerable to investigators scouring his financial picture.

There’s a lot to consider. For example, Trump appears to have had his daughter Ivanka serve as a “consultant” for his real estate firm, at the same time that she was working as an employee of the firm. Donald Trump wrote off $26 million in “unexplained” consulting fees from 2010 to 2018, according to the Times. “If the payments to his daughter were compensation for work, it’s not clear why [Donald] Trump would do it in this form,” the Times says, “other than to reduce his own tax liability. Another, more legally perilous possibility is that the fees were a way to transfer assets to his children without incurring a gift tax.”

The Times also details extravagant expenses—including over $70,000 of hairstyling charges—written off as business costs. The Trump Corp., a business 100% owned by Donald Trump, wrote off the fees paid to Alan Futerfas, an attorney that represented Donald Trump Jr. in the Russia probe, according to the newspaper. In another questionable move, Trump labeled his mansion in Bedford, New York, as an investment property, paving the way for him to write off $2.2 million of property taxes, according to the Times.

These machinations—and many more detailed in the story—proved successful. In 2016 and 2017, according to the Times, Trump paid just $750 of federal income taxes. The scandal isn’t that he’s broke and paying those meager sums—it’s that he remains quite rich.

 

Dan Alexander
I am a senior editor at Forbes, as well as the author of White House, Inc.: How Donald Trump Turned the Presidency into a Business, scheduled for release Sept. 22, 2020

President Trump's tax returns show he has company: How rich Americans avoid taxes

Nathan Bomey, USA TODAY•September 28, 2020

Details of President Trump's tax returns have been revealed by reports from New York Times

Like President Donald Trump, rich Americans often deploy sophisticated tax-avoidance strategies to maximize their wealth.

Not to be confused with tax evasion, which is illegal, tax avoidance is entirely legal, even if many view it as unfair. .

A sweeping New York Times report published Sunday revealed numerous tax reduction strategies used by Trump. He's not alone. Affluent taxpayers often have more avenues than ordinary Americans to avoid paying Uncle Sam.

Wealthy Americans are the largest source of under-reported income, according to IRS data analyzed by researchers. The top 1% of American taxpayers account for about 34% of misreported income, according to one study published in the National Tax Journal.

Still, many wealthy Americans deploy complex, arcane but wholly legal strategies to minimize their tax obligations. Some use fairly straight-forward strategies that allow them to minimize their taxes under the tax code.

President Donald Trump points to a question as he speaks during a briefing with reporters in the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House.

Here are some of the most common tax-avoidance strategies deployed by the wealthy:
Growing wealth through investments

It's much harder to avoid taxes on your paycheck than on your investments.

In general, the federal government taxes regular wages at higher rates than investment income. The long-term capital gains tax rate maxes out at 20%, while the highest income-tax rate is currently 37%.

In other words, if you make a salary of $1 million, the government keeps $370,000. But if you make $1 million on stocks or similar investments, the government keeps $200,000.
Selling assets at strategic times

Taxes on assets like stocks and real estate investments aren't owed until they are sold. That helps people like Jeff Bezos, the Amazon CEO, founder and richest person in the world, to grow their wealth rapidly while avoiding a huge tax bill. Then they can be strategic about when they sell.

By stockpiling assets without selling, rich investors can minimize their tax burden.

"Wealthy individuals can wait to sell until it makes the most sense for them, such as a year in which they will have large capital losses to offset the gain," according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Unrealized capital gains accounted for more than one-third of the assets held by the richest 1% of Americans in 2013, according to a Federal Reserve analysis. By comparison, the bottom 90% of Americans have only 6% of their assets in unrealized capital gains.
Using business income loopholes to reduce personal tax liability

The 2017 tax bill passed signed into law by Trump allowed for a 20% deduction on certain business income that passes through partnerships, sole proprietorships and S-corporations.

This is income that individuals report on their personal IRS returns, but the tax break allows them to reduce the tax rate on that money by up to 7.4 points, according to the CBPP.

This setup is most likely to help the wealthy: 61% of the benefits go to the wealthiest 1% of Americans, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.

Lisa De Simone, associate professor of accounting at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin, said many tax breaks that are available for business owners were put in place to stimulate risk-taking and innovation.

“There’s a notion that there are lots of tips and tricks that only the wealthy can take advantage of,” De Simone said. “The provisions weren’t written to try to help the wealthy get away with things.”

Instead, she said, new businesses can benefit when they’re able to deduct early losses from income.

“You don’t have to be super-rich in order to claim a business loss," she said.
Taking advantage of death tax policies to enrich their heirs

The tax code allows Americans to build wealth through deferred capital gains and then pass those assets tax-free along to their heirs upon death.

Called the "stepped-up basis" tax break, this loophole "encourages wealthy people to turn as much of their income into capital gains as possible and hold on to assets until death, when a lifetime of gain becomes permanently exempt from tax," according to the CBPP.

To be sure, the inheritor could be subject to paying the estate tax if the total value of the estate exceeds a certain threshold. But that threshold has been substantially increased.

The 2017 tax law doubled the amount of a deceased person's wealth that's shielded from the estate tax from about $5.5 million to more than $11 million. The limit is poised to reset to its original amount in 2025 unless Congress takes action.

Contributing: Susan Tompor of the Detroit Free Press

Follow USA TODAY reporter Nathan Bomey on Twitter @NathanBomey.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump tax returns: How rich Americans avoid taxes

Report: Financial records appear to show Ivanka Trump got 'consulting fees' to reduce father's tax bill

Catherine Garcia,
The Week•September 27, 2020


Tax records obtained by The New York Times appear to show that President Trump reduced his taxable income by treating his eldest daughter, Ivanka Trump, as a consultant, then deducting this as a business expense.

The Times reports that Trump Organization tax records show between 2010 and 2018, President Trump wrote off as business expenses $26 million in "consulting fees." The consultants are not listed by name, but the Times compared the tax records to financial disclosures Ivanka Trump filed when she started working at the White House in 2017 as a senior adviser to her father. Ivanka Trump reported receiving $747,622 in payments from a consulting company she co-owned — the same exact amount in consulting fees the Trump Organization claimed as tax deductions for hotel projects in Hawaii and Vancouver.

As an executive officer with the Trump Organization, Ivanka Trump managed the Hawaii and Vancouver hotel projects, "meaning she appears to have been treated as a consultant on the same hotel deals that she helped manage as part of her job at her father's business," the Times said. Ivanka Trump earned a salary of about $480,000 while serving as an executive with the Trump Organization, and the amount jumped up to $2 million after her father became president, the Times reports; since leaving to work in the White House, she has not received a salary from the company.

The tax filings also show that Trump collected $5 million for a hotel deal in Azerbaijan and reported $1.1 million in consulting fees and made $3 million in Dubai while reporting a $630,000 consulting fee. People with direct knowledge of the deals told the Times they were not aware of any consultants or third parties who would have been paid in connection with the projects. When asked about the matter, Alan Garten, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, did not comment.

The Internal Revenue Service said for consulting fees to be deducted as an expense, they must be an "ordinary and necessary" part of running a business, and the recipient must still pay income tax.


Trumpworld is imploding



Rick Newman
Senior Columnist,
Yahoo Finance•September 28, 2020

Donald Trump has many well-known enemies—and some stealthy ones, as well.

The main takeaway from a New York Times report on Trump’s tax records is that Trump claims to be a billionaire, yet in some years pays little or nothing in federal income taxes. Trump uses many legal tax credits to lower his bill, but may also break the law by exaggerating his business expenses or mischaracterizing payouts to family members.

There’s also an unstated revelation in the Times expose: Somebody close to Trump turned on him, leaking financial information that could be both politically damaging and legally treacherous. The Times isn’t saying where it got the detailed information on nearly 20 years of Trump tax returns, and isn’t even releasing the documents, to protect the source. But it seems obvious that a Trump insider is trying to damage him, flouting Trump’s famous demand for loyalty from anybody who works with him.

Trump is in a close reelection race, and it’s possible he could beat Democrat Joe Biden once the ballots are counted in November. At the same time, however, a more ominous scenario is unfolding. Trump’s notoriety as a combative president has brought unprecedented scrutiny to a family business that for decades was a black box, its inner workings secret. Trump is now facing more legal scrutiny than ever, including criminal probes into possible felonies. There are even signs his supposedly iron grip on the Republican Party could shatter if there’s an opportunity to dispatch Trump and move on.

First, the legal cases. The Manhattan district attorney is investigating Trump and his businesses for various types of fraud, probably including some of the tax-avoidance strategies described in a 2018 New York Times feature. The DA investigation is secret, so it’s not clear what the exact focus is. But city, state and federal prosecutors have an obligation to investigate possible crimes if they become aware of them, and the intense scrutiny of Trump’s finances since he became president may have surfaced plenty of trouble. Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, went to jail in part for his role facilitating a campaign-finance felony: the hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal. Trump signed the checks, meaning he’s at least as complicit as Cohen.

The New York State attorney general is mounting a separate investigation into whether Trump has misstated asset values to lower his tax payments or defraud lenders or insurers. The New York AG initiated this probe after Cohen testified before Congress in 2019 and accused Trump of fraud. Cohen might seem like an old story at this point, but the information he revealed after the FBI raided his office in 2018 could fuel investigations into Trump for years, and possibly lead to convictions.

It’s obviously tricky to investigate a sitting president, one reason the federal Justice Dept. has had no apparent role in probing Trump since William Barr became attorney general in 2019. But Trump won’t be president forever, and federal investigators could join the city and state probes of Trump at some point. The Justice Department’s Southern District of New York led the Cohen prosecution, which culminated in Cohen’s 2018 guilty plea on eight criminal counts. If Cohen provided incriminating information on Trump as part of that case, it would be logical for the Justice Dept. to pick up the probe once Trump is no longer president and certain legal privileges of the office expire.

SEPTEMBER 28th 2020: According to a report in The New York Times, Donald Trump paid $750 in federal income tax in both 2016 and 2017. - File Photo by: Dennis Van Tine/STAR MAX/IPx 2016 4/17/16 Donald Trump campaigns in Staten Island, New York City. (NYC)

All of this comes as Trump’s businesses are apparently under mounting financial pressure. According to the latest Times report, most of Trump’s properties lose money, and he owes $421 million in loans, much of that due in the next few years. Trump’s hotels, resorts and golf courses are struggling amid a travel rout, and while the presidency has elevated Trump’s visibility, his unpopularity may have harmed the brand.

Some of Trump’s legal woes stem from the decision of his niece, Mary Trump, to spill secrets of the family business to the New York Times for its 2018 expose on the Trump Organization’s aggressive tax strategies. Mary Trump is now suing the president and other family members for fraud relating to the family inheritance. Unless the various Trumps settle the suit, it could make public even more damaging information about Trump and his clan.

Matching these business and family mutinies are defections by former Trump aides now openly opposing his reelection, such as former national security adviser John Bolton and former spokesperson Anthony Scaramucci. Trump also faces unprecedented opposition from within his own party, with many moderate GOP officials endorsing Biden, funding anti-Trump ads and posting testimonials describing how Trump has let them down. More than 75 former Republican national-security officials have signed an open letter declaring Trump a threat to the nation.

Trump has manhandled most Republican elected officials, largely because he can mount furious opposition to their candidacies if they cross him. But this superpower is waning, too. Several otherwise loyal Senate Republicans, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, pushed back on Trump after he suggested he wouldn’t leave office if he loses to Biden. Some Republicans privately loathe Trump and fear he’s wrecking their party. They might not have the guts to oppose him publicly, but they might not help him, either, in a tight election that could bring Trump’s political end.

Nobody should count Trump out. He’s a renowned escape artist who has bounced back from four bankruptcies and many scandals. What’s different now, however, are growing fissures in the facade that for decades protected Trump’s family and business. Prosecutors and the public are getting a look inside, and it’s messy. People turn on the boss when it becomes a matter of survival, and the closer the scrutiny, the more trouble there’s likely to be. Trump’s downfall may not be imminent, but it is starting to look inevitable.

Rick Newman is the author of four books, including “Rebounders: How Winners Pivot from Setback to Success.” Follow him on Twitter: @rickjnewman. Confidential tip line: rickjnewman@yahoo.com. Encrypted communication available. Click here to get Rick’s stories by email.