The White House said Tuesday that President Donald Trump made more than $150 million in income in 2005 and paid $38 million in income taxes that year.
The acknowledgement came shortly before MSNBC host Rachel Maddow reported on two pages of Trump’s 2005 tax forms on her Tuesday night show.
The records were obtained by Pulitzer prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston, who said he received the documented unsolicited, in the mail.
The documents have become highly sought-after because Trump refused to release his returns during the campaign, breaking a decades-long tradition. He claimed he was under audit by the Internal Revenue Service and said his attorneys had advised against it — though experts and IRS officials said such audits don’t bar taxpayers from releasing their returns.
The White House pushed back pre-emptively Tuesday night, saying that publishing those returns would be illegal.
“You know you are desperate for ratings when you are willing to violate the law to push a story about two pages of tax returns from over a decade ago,” the White House said in a statement.
The unauthorized release or publishing of federal tax returns is a criminal offense, punishable by a fine of up to $5,000 and up to five years in jail. But Maddow argued that MSNBC was exercising its First Amendment right to publish information in the public interest.
Based on the documents obtained by Johnston, Trump paid $36.5 million in taxes on $153 million in income, for an effective tax rate of around 24 percent. That percentage is higher than the roughly 10 percent the average American pays each year — but below the 27.4 percent that taxpayers earning 1 million dollars a year average, according to data from the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.
Trump’s tax returns spotlight the role of the Alternative Minimum Tax, which was established nearly five decades ago to prevent the wealthy from using deductions and clever accounting to largely avoid paying taxes.
The AMT is a separate gauge of tax liability that, according to critics, has ensnared more middle-class people than intended, raising what they owe the federal government each year. It requires many taxpayers to calculate their taxes twice — once under the rules for regular income tax and then again under AMT — and then pay the higher amount.
Though opponents of the AMT have focused on the growing number of upper-middle-class earners who pay the tax, Trump’s 2005 disclosure shows it prevented him from avoiding most of the taxes he paid in 2005. If not for the AMT, Trump’s effective tax rate would have been just 3.5 percent.
Trump, according to his campaign website, has said he wanted to eliminate the tax, which is expected to bring in more than $350 billion in revenues from 2016 to 2025.
Trump long insisted the American public wasn’t interested in his returns and said little could be learned from them. But Trump’s full returns would contain key details about things like his charitable giving, his income sources, the type of deductions he claimed, how much he earned from his assets and what strategies Trump used to reduce his tax bill.
The issue was a major point of attack from his election rival Hillary Clinton, who suggested Trump had something to hide.
The White House has not said whether or not the president plans to release his returns while he’s in office. More than 1 million people have signed a White House petition urging the president to release them.
(AP)
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9 Responses
This 10 year old tax return actually helps Trump by showing he paid a very reasonable effective tax rate, much higher than many of his critics have alleged. He would help himself even more by simply releasing his more recent tax returns and take this issue off the table permanently. Even many of the Republicans are now saying its time for him to release the tax returns on his own terms, claim victory and move on.
that is not a low tax rate for unearned and investment income. he probably doesn’t have a salary from his ventures and entities and receives mostly dividends and capital gains. maybe some ordinary income from them flows to his individual return. the 3.5 tax rate is the average rate, after all his deductions. if he gives a lot of charity, pays state tax and had investment expenses, those will lower his final tax rate. the AMT disallows some of his deductions so he pays an effective rate of 24%. any accountant knows these things. the problem is that people who don’t understand the complicated US tax system are throwing around opinions about his tax situation while he is keeping quiet and laughing, as he should, since he is doing it all legal and surely hired a good accountant to make sure he pays the least possible, like any good businessman should do. If anyone has complaints about his return, they should direct them to congress,who created the tax code and its loopholes, not his tax return.
> But Trump’s full returns would contain key details about things like his charitable giving, his income sources, the type of deductions he claimed, how much he earned from his assets and what strategies Trump used to reduce his tax bill.
For one thing, it is obvious from the mass news sources that there is a movement to boycott and or otherwise hurt anything related to Trump. Thus revelations of his charity , income etc. would obviously become a rallying point for these lunatics to boycott and or otherwise hurt these charities and income sources.
Sorry only those republicans that are still anti trumpets are the feast don’t care
See he is president and you are only trying to de ligetatize him
Could you show us Obama’s and the Clintons’ tax returns or are they excluded from paying taxes.
To No. 5
Boker Tov. In case you didn’t know, Al Gore invented something called the internet. If you took about 3 minutes to search, you would find that both the Obama and Clinton tax returns were posted each year on the White House web site and were archived at WH.gov unless of course, the current resident of the WH has deleted all the old files. In fact, there are several websites where you can find the tax returns of EVERY president going back to Gerald Ford except of course, for the Trumpkopf.
This whole MSNBC “tax circus” is a non-event since it shows that Trump paid a reasonable tax rate for 2005 and I suspect if he released his current tax returns, it wouldn’t show anything much different. However, for some reason, he wants to perpetuate this broigas for some reason only he knows.
Obama’s 2015 tax returns are here:
https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/images/Blog/Obamas%202015%20Taxes.pdf
(not sure if that is the real one as it doesn’t have the SS#s on it)
Clinton’s are here:
https://m.hrc.onl/secretary/10-documents/01-health-financial-records/Clinton_2015_Form_1040_with_Signature_Page.pdf
In 2015 Obama paid 18% and Big mouth Sanders paid 13%. Need we say more to these hypocrites?
CHECKMATE!
Who says that this his correct tax return from 2005? Anybody could go on a tax software program and type what you want. There is a way to get a certified copy from the IRS which shows the actual return that was filed for a fee.
https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc156.html