tax loopholes

In Blog No. 115 we suggested that, even if Donald Trump persisted in his refusal to disclose his tax returns, he should be pressed to disclose key information from the returns. An excellent column in Friday’s New York Times by James Stewart makes just that point: “Keep the Returns, Trump; Just Give Us a Few Figures.” As Stewart put it:

So just give us this: your adjusted gross income and actual federal taxes paid for the last five years, certified by your accountants. That’s a total of 10 numbers, which would fit on a single page.

Those are numbers any taxpayer can understand. They wouldn’t tell the I.R.S. anything it doesn’t already know.

And while they wouldn’t answer many of the questions that have swirled around your finances, they would lay to rest once and for all the most basic question: How much, if anything, do you pay in federal taxes?

Read More »An Afternote to Blog 115: Donald Trump’s Tax Returns