Wyatt earp
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- Apr 21, 2012
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Legally being the keyword here
Wrong, the key word here is dubious (if Trump released his taxes, he'd probably be in jail - golden letters or not.) because, now that the underfunded IRS has been alerted to Trump's dodge it's doubtful the IRS will simply pocket that info.
It's not likely the IRS will take any action during campaign (it's government policy, except for Jim Comey who plays by his own rules) season but... But Trump walked a legal tightrope and according to many tax experts Trump stepped over the line but because of several letters that were sent to the IRS by Trump's paid tax lawyers - apparently that's all it takes (I've done that myself) even at the billionaire level where the tax dodge by Trump was in the 10's possibly 100's of millions of dollars in revenue that had to be made up by other people paying more or-----or the federal government having to borrow more and more money from overseas sources.
But my questions are; is Trump still clipping coupons from his 1994 tax dodge? Was Trump still cashing in after the law was changed (Hillary voted for the change) in 2004? Even if Trump is able to skate on the legal technicalities of the tax code, will Trump's creditors and partners that got screwed in Trump's 1994 tax dodge be able to sue for damages from Trump's manipulation of the tax code? Was Lyin' Trump lying when he said he's been audited 12 years in row?
Trump's tax dodge skirted the edge of the law, report says
Seema Mehta
At a time when Donald Trump’s casinos were bleeding money and he was badly in debt, the Republican presidential nominee used a “legally dubious” accounting maneuver to avoid reporting hundreds of millions of dollars in income, according to a New York Times report Monday.
In the early 1990s, Trump convinced financial backers to forgive large debts he could not repay, the paper wrote. But he avoided having to report the canceled debts as income because he gave the backers equity in his partnerships that owned the casinos, effectively writing off the income.
Trump’s attorneys advised him at the time that if he were audited, the Internal Revenue Service would not look favorably upon the tactic, the paper reported. In 2004, Congress voted to outlaw the practice. Then-Sen. Hillary Clinton was among those who voted to close the loophole.
Trump declined to comment on the report, and his spokeswoman Hope Hicks dismissed it as “either a fundamental misunderstanding or an intentional misreading of the law.”
The Times wrote that it discovered the tax gambit while combing through casino bankruptcy filings. The newspaper posted on its website “tax opinion letters” Trump obtained from his attorneys about the maneuvers.
On the campaign trail, Trump has bragged about his ability to use tax loopholes and said his knowledge of the flaws in the tax structure made him the most capable to fix it.
But Trump's claims about his taxes and income are not independently verifiable because he has refused to release his tax returns, bucking four decades of practice among presidential nominees.
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if Trump released his taxes, he'd probably be in jail - golden letters or not.
Why would he be in jail?????????
Again he is always getting audited what's different this time?