The Goat Pen

After tabulating all the profits and losses from Mr. Trump’s various endeavors on Form 1040, the accountants came to Line 56, where they had to enter the total income tax the candidate was required to pay. They needed space for only a single figure.

Zero.

For Mr. Trump, that bottom line must have looked familiar. It was the fourth year in a row that he had not paid a penny of federal income taxes.

DooKSucks wrote: ↑Mon Sep 28, 2020 10:40 am

sardis wrote: ↑Mon Sep 28, 2020 9:41 am Okay, tax education. There is one lobby group that is more powerful than Wall St. and that is real estate developers. I know because I pounded the pavement in DC and Raleigh back in the day to help the industry because most of my tax clients are commercial developers. Real estate developers get the most loopholes than any other industry. When they build a building, they get to write off (depreciate) about 40% of the project in year one even though they may have leveraged the property 80% and have no personal risk on the debt. When they sell a building at a gain, they don't have to recognize taxable gain as long as they reinvest the proceeds into another piece of real estate. As long as they keep placing properties in service and always reinvest their sales they incur significant losses on the tax return and pay hardly any tax even though the project is economically successful. Most of my clients are like Trump. They take advantage of the loopholes and pay very little tax.

I have a friend who's family is in the tax credit business. They get millions in tax credits for building low income housing.

They get the apartments, make money off of them like Sardis describes AND they get to sell the tax credits for millions.

Of course they're massive Trumpers despite the fact that their wealth is derived from government programs.

eCat wrote: ↑Mon Sep 28, 2020 11:42 am

hedge wrote: ↑Mon Sep 28, 2020 11:36 am Yeah, and Trump has already "declared" he's worth $10 billion...

did anyone really believe Trump's statements about his worth?....ever?

aTm wrote: ↑Mon Sep 28, 2020 5:15 pm Actually, it's not clear to me really whats going on with the reporting on his tax returns in this article. I find it very odd that they would use his line 56 total as the baseline for their reporting and not line 63 which is the actual "This is your total tax" line from a tax return. But it would theoretically be the tax he owed for normal taxes after credit, but there are several lines after that could still increase what he owed.

Jungle Rat wrote: ↑Mon Sep 28, 2020 4:53 pm

DooKSucks wrote: ↑Mon Sep 28, 2020 10:40 am

sardis wrote: ↑Mon Sep 28, 2020 9:41 am Okay, tax education. There is one lobby group that is more powerful than Wall St. and that is real estate developers. I know because I pounded the pavement in DC and Raleigh back in the day to help the industry because most of my tax clients are commercial developers. Real estate developers get the most loopholes than any other industry. When they build a building, they get to write off (depreciate) about 40% of the project in year one even though they may have leveraged the property 80% and have no personal risk on the debt. When they sell a building at a gain, they don't have to recognize taxable gain as long as they reinvest the proceeds into another piece of real estate. As long as they keep placing properties in service and always reinvest their sales they incur significant losses on the tax return and pay hardly any tax even though the project is economically successful. Most of my clients are like Trump. They take advantage of the loopholes and pay very little tax.

I have a friend who's family is in the tax credit business. They get millions in tax credits for building low income housing.

They get the apartments, make money off of them like Sardis describes AND they get to sell the tax credits for millions.

Of course they're massive Trumpers despite the fact that their wealth is derived from government programs.

That's what I did way back when.

DooKSucks wrote: ↑Tue Sep 29, 2020 1:35 am

Jungle Rat wrote: ↑Mon Sep 28, 2020 4:53 pm

DooKSucks wrote: ↑Mon Sep 28, 2020 10:40 am

I have a friend who's family is in the tax credit business. They get millions in tax credits for building low income housing.

They get the apartments, make money off of them like Sardis describes AND they get to sell the tax credits for millions.

Of course they're massive Trumpers despite the fact that their wealth is derived from government programs.

That's what I did way back when.

Interesting. If you have the connections, funding/credit and know how to do it, it seems to be a hell of a business...