David Cay Johnston has come up with a plausible explanation of how Donald Trump used business losses to avoid paying federal income taxes. Johnston is an expert on how the wealthy use the tax code to their advantage. My aim in calling attention to this is not just to criticize Trump for minimizing his tax bills, but to raise the larger question of what kind of tax reform is needed and whether a Trump administration is likely to pursue it.
Turning business failure into personal gain
In the early 1990s, Donald Trump was the owner of failing casinos and other unsuccessful business ventures. He had borrowed and spent so lavishly that his businesses couldn’t make their loan payments and still turn a profit. Trump was like a homeowner living in a flashy mansion but going broke trying to make the payments on it. He reported net operating losses of $916 million in 1995 and was $3 billion in debt.
The operating losses had a silver lining, however. The federal tax code allowed him to use those losses to offset personal income for as many as 18 years, running from two years before the reported loss to 15 years after.
As for the debt, he got the banks to forgive almost $1 billion of it by threatening “endless litigation” if they tried to collect what he owed. Trump has boasted about his habit of paying less than he owes. “I’ve borrowed knowing you can pay back with discounts.” Many borrowers who lost their homes in the real estate meltdown would have liked that deal. Conservatives accused President Obama of “subsidizing losers” when he proposed assisting such homeowners. Trump also got a tax break on his debt forgiveness, which would normally be considered a form of income. But Congress created an exemption that allows real estate owners to avoid this tax liability if they sacrifice future deductions for depreciation instead. (One of the tax benefits of real estate is the ability to take a deduction each year for property depreciation.) Trump had personally testified on behalf of the exemption.
Trump still had a problem, however. He still owned properties that were losing money, and they were now worth even less as investments because he had forfeited the future tax benefit of depreciation in return for an immediate tax benefit for himself. Nevertheless, he was able to sell the properties to a new stock corporation he created, Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts. The investors must have grossly overestimated the potential return, perhaps as Johnston says because they “saw gold in his brand name.” They bought the shiny image and overlooked the ugly reality. Could there be a lesson here for voters?
As the chairman of Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts, Trump was well paid whether the company succeeded or failed. He also had the company borrow more money in order to pay off his previous loans, thus saddling the corporation with what had been his personal obligations. With him in charge, the company lost over a billion dollars; the stock value plummeted, and the investors were wiped out. He walked away with millions of dollars in tax-free income, but everyone else lost–investors, contractors, and the taxpayers who subsidized his me-first business practices.
Why does it matter?
All of the financial moves I’ve described may have been legal. (Johnston does charge him with tax fraud in other contexts, but that’s another matter.) Trump’s defenders blame his economic failures on economic conditions beyond his control, justify his tax maneuvers as normal efforts to avoid paying more than the tax code requires, and praise his “genius” in achieving personal success in the face of financial adversity.
All of those claims are controversial. Rather than dispute them, I want to emphasize something else, which is tax policy. Donald Trump himself has said something like this: The tax system is rigged, but since I know the tax code so well and have brilliantly used it to my advantage, I’m the best person to fix it! Or to put it a little more whimsically, I’m the smartest fox to guard the henhouse, since I’ve been feasting on chicken for a long time!
This is a clever argument. The problem I have with it is that I see no evidence of Trump’s interest in tax reform. Democrats continue to complain loudly about his failure to release his tax returns. I wish they would call more attention to what he has released, which is at least the main outline of a tax plan. As I described it in an earlier post, it is standard Republican fare. It makes the tax code flatter and less progressive by lowering tax rates for the wealthy, and it includes new goodies like the elimination of the estate taxes that are paid by only the richest one-fifth of one percent. Surprise surprise, Donald Trump and his family stand to make a fortune from his own tax proposals. In contrast, Hillary Clinton wants to increase estate taxes and implement the “Buffet rule,” which would require those with million-dollar incomes to pay at least 30% in income taxes. I see little chance that her plan will get through a Republican-controlled Congress, but at least it’s an authentic proposal for reform.
So Donald Trump, who has cultivated the image of the populist outsider, defender of the working people, is really the protector of the rich and powerful. Hillary Clinton, the Washington insider, is really the progressive reformer. The cunning fox shows no sign of giving up his chicken dinners. If we want someone to guard the henhouse, we’d better elect a hen.
Beneath the Surface 